Rise of the Phoenixes
by D.K.N
Summary: Backstory of universe introduced in Teana's Travels Book 3. How the corrupt Confederacy fell and the Phoenix League rose from its ashes. Rated M for violence and language.
1. Beginnings

Well, the progression of Teana's Travels Book 5 has been slowed to a crawl so as to give Negima canon time to advance, so I don't end up stepping on the toes of future canon revelations. In the mean time, I've decided to start work on this little side-project: the backstory of the universe shown in Book 3. This fic will cover how the Phoenix League formed and fought its way free of the vile, corrupt Sol Confederacy, along with later conflicts between then and the arrival of the _Starshot_.

In case you've forgotten, this universe is essentially a _heavily _modified timeline of the Rejuve Verse created by "Lurking Dragon"; the heaviest modifications are the Confederacy (which is horribly corrupt and oppressive in this timeline), the tone (original was basically a spanking-fetishist's universe; this is a Darker And Edgier wartime fic), and the date (2800s in the original canon, 2500s in this universe).

TO SITE ADMINS AND TO HATERS/REJUVE-VERSE-PURISTS/OTHER FOLK: This fic is a vital portion of the Teana's Travels series, giving backstory for a universe AND introducing characters who WILL make appearances later in the main series, some of them with fairly major roles. Deletion of this fic, for whatever reason, would leave a huge, gaping plot hole for future works in the main series, and would undermine the characterization of future-introduced individuals. If you don't like it, don't read it.

I'm throwing in an extensive disclaimer (including characters who won't make appearances for a little while), but if I miss anyone or anything let me know and I'll add it.

Also, in case anyone's forgotten, the Teana's Travels series now has a TV-Tropes page. That page will now also cover this fic. Get crackin', folks!

**-**_**DISCLAIMER**_**-**

I do not own and did not create the Rejuve Verse; it is the creation of "Lurking Dragon", as are the characters John Devine, Melody Marston-Johnson (and her _penni_-parents), Jane Smythe, President M'Butu, Ms. Garrett, and the species the Jalaxians, the Drakonians, and the Rigellians

The species known as Aspatrians are the creation of "Professor Bob"

The character Grace Staunton-Howard is the creation of "Haley Brimley", though the incarnation of her seen in this series is radically different from the original, due to life experiences having shaped her personality and viewpoints.

Various characters and races are from the members of the "Bottoms Valley" forums: Ken/Kate Scott-Compton, Dan/Dani Wilson, and Mr. and Mrs. Compton (user "Casey"); the Kyyreni race (user "Kaido"); Claudia (user "Kazunari"); Klara Leads, Kairi, the Lucavi race, and a brief mention of Eve (user "Nekochild", though my version of Klara is somewhat different from NC's characterization of her); the twins Jemmi (user "Darkriver") and Jenny (user "Ishy"); Ishtar (user "Ishy"; my name for her (and Kairi's) species, "Elvaan", is my creation, with Ishy's "Space Elf" serving as a common colloquialism). Various individuals mentioned here have personalities different from their personal "canon", as well as different histories.

Various characters (Miles Fairbrass, Harold Henriksen, John Shepherd, Leonid Dragovich, others) are my own creations

TECHNOLOGY USED BY THE PHOENIX LEAGUE DUE TO TRANSDIMENSIONAL LINKAGE AND FORGES:

_Halo _is the property of Bungie Studios and 343 Industries (Forerunner tech; UNSC weapons, vehicles, and tech)

_StarCraft _is the property of Blizzard Entertainment (Terran weapons, vehicles, and tech)

_Gears of War _is the property of Epic Games (COG weapons, vehicles, and tech)

_Star Wars _is the property of George Lucas (blaster weaponry and the term "droid"; no lightsabers, though)

_Call of Duty _series is the property of Infinity Ward and Treyarch (the fact that this timeline is the distant future of the _Call of Duty _/ _Modern Warfare _universe, with appropriate in-story mentions of pivotal events, and some of my OCs are descendants of CoD/MW important characters)

_Transformers _is the property of Hasbro (oh-so-brief in-universe mentions & homage, as well as two characters' aliases)

**-**_**CHAPTER START**_**-**

In 2087 AD, exploration ships of the newborn Sol Confederacy discovered ancient tech aboard a derelict and long-abandoned space station of nonhuman origin orbiting a dead planet in the Tau Ceti System. Once they puzzled out how to work the damn things, humanity realized that this new tech could completely revolutionize nearly everything about human life and civilization. A person affected by the technology would be "de-aged" into childhood (though only physically; no memory loss or significant personality changes unless they were set back to less than 24 months or so of age).

This kind of tech revolutionized the way lives are lived, and the concept of age. Getting too old? Just "rejuve" into a kid and live again. Horribly injured, too much so to save through standard medicine? Rejuve, and your kid self is in perfect condition. Need to learn something that'll literally take more than a single lifetime to learn? Learn as much of it as you can, rejuve, keep the knowledge, and keep learning more of it. Essentially, lifespans could now be measured in centuries.

To keep the human population from ballooning out of control, strict measures were enacted: the Kensington Protocol, a mandatory, reversible sterilization performed during childhood, to be released only if the people involved passed a government test that ensure they had what it took to be parents, _and _that the local population wasn't already at peak; and the Fujikawa Protocol, which artificially delays puberty until around mid-to-late high-school age. As a consequence of the latter, the legal age of adulthood was raised to 21; this causes some problems, however, when young-adult people from colonies who did not use the Fujikawa Protocol (and thus still had the age of adulthood at 18) tried to visit colonies that did, only to find that, despite being the same physical state as a Fujikawa-user in their mid-20s, were technically and legally children on said worlds. The general solution is for those who are above their worlds' legal age but below the core worlds' is to simply avoid traveling to the core worlds if at all possible until they reached 21.

By the mid 26th century, the human population was "only" a little over 10 billion, thanks to these methods of population control. Even so, besides the Sol System, there were 16 inhabited Inner Colonies, and 25 inhabited Outer Colonies (and 775 uninhabited Outer worlds still under Confederate jurisdiction, visited by specially-created machines to harvest valuable resources for the inhabited worlds to use).

But by far the biggest change was to the justice system. Under the new system, criminals of all types, rather than incarceration or execution, are forcefully rejuved and placed in the "care" of "parents" who give scheduled, harsh, and often-unearned spankings and humiliations; the length and severity of a "sentence" was usually proportionate to the crime. The system was _supposed _to operate on the principle of "make them realize what they did was wrong, and then raise them right." This was dubbed the _Penitatas _Program.

Things worked smoothly for a few decades. But then things went wrong.

A few decades after the establishment of Rejuve Tech, corruption took root within the Sol Confederacy. Over the years, decades, and centuries, it grew and grew and grew. By the mid 26th century, corruption and oppression were positively rampant within the Confederacy, at nearly every rung on the ladder, in civilian, military, and government positions. People in the highest echelons of government worked to suppress any dissent against their rule. Millions of people – peaceful protestors, dissenters, and even people who knew too much or were even just in the wrong place at the wrong time – were snatched up, branded with trumped-up and/or wholly fabricated charges, and "_pennied_"… or, failing that, assassinated. Several other atrocities were committed as well, which may or may not be mentioned later on. And all the while, a carefully elaborate ruse was constructed to keep the populace at large from learning the true depths of depravity their government had fallen into; nearly all of the rank-and-file military were ignorant of the real situation, as were some of the higher-ups. Even the Confederacy's Presidents were kept in the dark, being tricked into thinking they had some form of power or influence when they were really just figureheads, with the data on the corruption's influence and actions carefully hidden from them. The Confederacy's nonhuman allies were also kept in the dark (though some races, such as the Kyyreni, the Lucavi – who the Confederacy hadn't even technically proven the existence of due to their stealth - , and the Elvaan, were already distrusting of the Confederacy for various reasons).

Various small movements sprung up all over Human Space over the years, but they were small enough that they either never got off the ground or were viciously stomped out by the corrupt Confederacy. But that would soon change…

However, before we cover the beginnings of what would be the corrupt regime's doom, let us focus on a certain person: a physically-young girl, used as a scapegoat/"fall-guy" in an embezzlement scam and made a "_penni_" for it, and her first steps towards becoming something far greater…

**-**_**SCENE BREAK**_**-**

**A-Ville Elementary Courtyard**

**Albany, New York**

**October 25****th****, 2550 AD**

She had always been weak.

Thanks in part to being raised by a mother stressed out by the death in combat of her husband, she had grown into a woman who nearly always folded and caved in to demands and to even mildly-tenacious requests. When Donald Tenfeld had wooed her, promised her things, said that they were just borrowing the money and were gonna pay it back, she believed and followed; even when her judgment and instincts started to inform her that something was wrong, she meekly, obediently bended to his will. And then he skipped out-system, leaving her to suffer for the things that he had done and had made her do.

She'd seen the _Medicalos _– a small five-year-old girl – being accosted by the two technically-eight-year-old boys with broken circles _on _their hands and knives _in _their hands, had recognized them as the Clyde brothers, a duo who had done something almost unheard of: escape from their captivity. They'd been all over the news lately; both had, as adults, been the two leaders of a vicious gang, who considered a prestigious kill as necessity to advance in the ranks. After being captured and made "broken-circle _pennies_", they'd somehow escaped before they could be "broken", and had been at large for about a month. Here they'd been trying to earn their first kill of their "new" life.

She'd seen how nobody was around, not even teachers, and she'd uncharacteristically leapt in to save the victim.

Now, the victim was roughed up but still conscious, but paralyzed with fear, as the brothers had turned their attention to the would-be rescuer.

She was pinned on her hands & knees, a foot pressing into her back and a hand pulling back on her ponytail of long, blonde hair, causing pain to crawl across her scalp. She was beaten and bruised all over, and several cuts marred her skin, including one across her right cheek and another over the black "P" on the back of her right hand, the black of the nano-dye and the red of her blood mixing together in her vision.

She was weak. The boys said so as they taunted and beat her, berating her for trying to be a hero when she couldn't even save herself. She had been weak for a long, long time. She realized this now. The other girl would die if she was weak, and so would she herself. She sorrowfully embraced this epiphany. But… she had been weak for too long. She shouldn't be weak…

There was a sound as her hand managed to grab hold of the knife that the other brother, standing near the _Medicalos_, had dropped, and with a single motion brought the weapon behind her back and sliced through her ponytail near the base; the boy pinning her was thrown off-balance, the long hair in his grip no longer attached to the head it grew from, sending him stumbling backwards, off of her.

She stood up. And as she turned to face the Clyde brothers, her now shoulder-length golden-blond hair blowing in a sudden breeze, her eyes holding fortitude, courage, determination, and will such that they never had before, Melody Johnson, born Melody Marston, made a solemn vow to herself, a message clear in her gaze that she directed at them:

She would never be weak again.

Both boys visibly flinched slightly at the look she gave them, but that passed. The unarmed one charged her first, going for a left feint leading into a right-hand attack. But he'd used that against her earlier when they double-teamed her, and she wouldn't fall for the same trick twice. Melody moved to her right – his left – and dodged his actual attack by inches, getting an up-close look at his surprised face as he neared her… which became a look of surprised pain as her arm lashed out just below his neck, her arm-strike and the boy's own momentum combining to clothesline him, knocking him off his feet. The other boy charged, knife drawn, but Melody yanked the first one to his feet and swung/threw him toward the other, sending him stumbling uncontrolled into his armed brother's path. The armed one couldn't react in time, his knife sent flying harmlessly as they collided.

The two boys untangled themselves, got to their feet, and rushed her again, this time together. The slightly taller, previously-armed one reached her first, accidentally outpacing his brother, and Melody narrowly dodged a right cross; she then grabbed his arm and flipped/threw him past her, turning his momentum against him and causing him to land hard on his back. The other reached her, and landed a punch, but she rolled with it, minimizing the damage. She lashed out with a kick at his left kneecap, causing that leg to buckle from pain. She then hit him with a hand-chop to the side of the head, and then grabbed hold of his shirt, and pulled him down… into her rising knee, which smashed _hard_ into his solar plexus. He doubled over and collapsed in a heap.

The first one was on his feet again, and had picked up his now-downed brother's knife (the one Melody had freed herself with). He lunged at her, and she narrowly avoided a stab to the eye. She dodged a few more hits by mere centimeters, and during one of those she suddenly felt a pain mid-torso. She ignored it, catching his knife-hand and squeezing & twisting the wrist hard, until she felt something crack and the knife fell out of his hand. She then went on her counterattack, hitting the stunned would-be-murderer with blow after blow. By the end of it, he was wobbling on his feet, hunched over lightly. He stumbled forward, starting to fall.

And then, time seemed to work in slow-motion as Melody delivered her final hit: a rising palm-thrust with her right hand that impacted his lower jaw from below with (for a child) tremendous force. For a split-second, he was actually airborne, the strike sending him up and backwards. He landed hard on his back, unconscious before he even hit the ground.

Melody stood, panting lightly, still in the position from having made her last strike, her right hand held up at an angle, the blood running down her hand from the knife-slash across the black "P" on the back. After several seconds, she then slowly lowered her arm and stood straight, fists by her sides, eyes closed. She raised her head and opened her eyes, staring into the sky, a breeze blowing through her now-short golden-blonde hair, as the little girl she'd just saved looked on with absolute reverence and awe.

The sound of footsteps running closer killed the silence, as Ms. Garrett ran toward the scene, followed closely by Joshua & Mary Johnson, Melody's "penni-parents". Joshua took a tertiary look at the scene, and immediately advanced on Melody with an angry look in his eyes, only for the little _Medicalos _to step in-between him and Mel, a defiant glare in her eyes.

"Don't you dare!" she cried out in her little voice. "She saved me! These boys were gonna kill me, but she jumped in and saved me! She almost got killed, just to save _me_, someone she doesn't even know! How could you even _think _of punishing her for being a hero?-!"

The man stepped back, shocked. Ms. Garrett looked around at the scene, seeing two knives scattered about and the bloody slashes on Melody… and then she took a closer look at the unconscious boys.

"Holy crap…" she said. "These are the Clyde Brothers! Melody… took down the Clyde Brothers?-!"

The other two adults gasped; the infamous escaped duo who'd been all over the news lately… and Mel had fought them both off? Mary took a closer look at Melody. The girl's eyes held an intensity the likes of which she'd only ever seen before in the hardest-core of soldiers in holo-recordings. Her long ponytail was gone, hacked off and laying on the ground nearby, leaving her slightly-uneven hair hanging just long enough to lightly brush against her shoulders. She had various bruises and cuts from the beating she'd taken. There was a knife-slash on her right cheek, below her eye, blood having run down from it. Another slash was across the _penni_-mark on her right hand, the black "P" obscured by blood. And… her eyes locked on a spot just above Melody's stomach. Melody followed her gaze, and touched her hand to a small tear in her shirt. She hissed in pain, and her two fingers came back with blood on them.

"Huh" Mel said, sounding utterly calm and blasé about the whole thing, "guess I _didn't _dodge all of them…"

Mary stepped forward and lifted Melody's shirt… and went pale. It wasn't very deep-looking, but Melody had been stabbed right below the ribcage. As Ms. Garrett saw this, she then radioed for emergency personnel; soon, a VTOL ambulance was on the way, along with a police cruiser. Melody simply sat, applying pressure to her own wound to slow the bleeding. Mary and Joshua were left utterly stunned as Mel simply sat quietly and tended to herself, never once even showing anything more than a slight wince whenever she shifted the hand pressing on the wound, and completely ignoring the bloody gashes on her hand and cheek. All the while, the girl's eyes remained hard and calm, her gaze holding weight it never had before.

**-**_**SCENE BREAK**_**-**

**Johnson Residence**

**Albany, New York**

**November 12****th****, 2550**

The past half a month had been… different. As she was tended to at the hospital, Melody had adamantly refused nanobot restoration of her three most prominent wounds, wishing to let them become scars which would remind her of "the weakling (she) used to be and will never be again". Due to her accomplishments, the hospital and the court acquiesced, and Melody now bore a small, thin scar on her right cheek, another across the back of her right hand that cut across the black "P" there, and in the center of her chest another scar marked where she had taken a stab (the doctor had said that, had it been any farther in, it would've hit something vital). After Melody had been patched up, Ms. Garrett had kindly evened out the rough cut of Mel's hair from when she'd sliced herself free.

Mel's accomplishments in taking down the Clyde Brothers had made the news. Footage from a security camera showed how she'd leapt to the little _Medicalos_' defense, and how she'd turned the fight around to take the escaped murderers down for the count. The most notable rewards were that her sentence as a _Penni _was reduced by one-third in terms of length, and she was also given three full weeks free of court-scheduled "punishments"; granted, "earned" punishments, for infractions, were still okayed, but she hadn't gotten any of those because she hadn't done anything to warrant them since the incident. She'd gotten quite the attention at school, and the girl she'd saved was practically hero-worshipping her now, but she paid it all little mind.

While being tended to at the hospital, she'd spoken to Mary & Joshua and to Ms. Garret, making known her epiphany and self-vow. How she had been "weak" her entire life, and now sought to rid herself of that "weakness". True to her word, Melody had spent nearly all of her time since that day mentally reinventing herself, going over her inner thought processes, making decisions, reevaluating herself, and working to strengthen her own resolve, focus her willpower, continue to change her outlook, and utterly quash the hints of her meek, "helpless" previous self. The change was startling: Melody was now somewhat quiet, though only because she the inquisitive, "how may I help you" attitude of her old self; when she did speak, it was short, straight, to-the-point, and far more serious than any child had the right to be (according to Joshua's description), the high tone of a sweet little girl now gone from her voice. Her eyes showed a steeliness and strength that belonged more to a trained soldier or such than a physically-a-child, her gaze scrutinizing every person that spoke to her; a few people were a tad unnerved by the intensity in her eyes now. A test ordered by a suspicious Joshua showed that her nano-web was still online, but she was supplanting and overcoming it through a combination of emotional self-control, drive, and sheer willpower; Melody's will had increased dramatically in strength over the weeks as her psyche and her mind adapted, evolved, and changed.

She'd also started training her body, doing what she could when she could to try and get herself into "better shape" so that, if she ever had to fight again, she'd come out of it quicker and with less injuries. But it was also to work off stress. Mel had come to realize that, now that she went over her pre-rejuve memories and of things she'd seen since, there was something… _wrong_ with the Confederacy. She'd soon heard whispers, rumors, of everything from protests that mysteriously vanished overnight, to corruption and even suppression of various people and things. Also, she'd gone over what Donald had done to her, and it had finally sunken in just how badly he had used and betrayed her. This revelation left her angry, a desire for eventual revenge taking root in her heart.

Today, her "family" (she scoffed) was in the living room, while she herself sat in her own room, having just finished a little workout. She gave a sigh, and walked over to her radio. She tuned it to her usual favorite listening station, but instead caught the last half of a hacked broadcast. A broadcast that would lead to events to totally change her life, and serve as a harbinger of things to come:

"Our teachers and prophets are false!" shouted the voice of what sounded like a young boy, yet speaking like an adult, with great fervor. "Open your eyes, my brethren! They would use the creations and sins of our forefathers to broadcast their lies and bring ruin to us all! The Confederacy is _evil_; marred with _vile _corruption and greed, filled with those who seek only to feed their own _lust _for _power_! In their hands, the _Penitatas _Program has become a tool to suppress and enslave the righteous and innocent! It is _slavery_! The evil men and women who lay claim to humanity's worlds _must _be deposed!"

"Remove the veils they have placed over your eyes!" came the voice of a girl, again sounding physically young but definitely not mentally so. "Brothers and sisters, it is time that we cast aside our differences, throw out notions of race, nationality, or religion, and _unite_! The Confederacy is an oppressive regime of _corrupt enslavers_ and _rampant avarice_, a _stain_ on the history of humanity! A stain that must be _scrubbed out_! They have enslaved and _tortured_ people for over _350 years_! They have heaped one vastly disproportionate punishment upon us after another! The corrupt frame the clean, the guilty punish the innocent! Those of us who simply seek the rights of safety, solidarity, and comfort are punished the same as traitors, rapists, and mass-murderers! When our people seek the rights they are entitled to have simply by existing, they are struck down and reigned in like _animals_! Billions of us have suffered unjustly at the hands of _monsters_ in human form! They control our emotions like _puppets_; suppress with great violence all attempts at self-defense! It is an _outrage_; an utter violation of humanity not seen since the days of the dictators of the early 1900s!"

"That is why we must _fight_! Rise up, my brethren! Join hand in hand, and assist your fellow sufferers in fighting for a better future! Punish the insolent, evil ones who claim Earth and her colonies in their own greedy names! Reclaim humanity's right to freedom and prosperity! Their time of oppression and corruption nears its end! We must unify, so that we may see _our _flag ascend over the capitals of humanity!"

"My brethren, to achieve the freedom we have so long deserved, you – _we – _must fight! The seeds of righteous rebellion have taken root and _sprouted_! As I speak, our numbers grow by the day! Our forges prepare the tools that we shall use to reclaim our stolen _freedom_! Each of us must _fight_! To arms, my brothers and sisters, _to arms_! Even many who are not pennies have seen the truth and pledged their support to our noble cause, sworn to fight alongside us! We must take up the sword, and bring _death_ to all those who spread _suffering_ and _corruption_ across the worlds, along with those who defend them! We shall _crush _them with our _might_! We shall _burn _them with the _cleansing fire _in our _hearts_ and _souls_! We shall _break _them with our _iron will_! Failing all else, we shall _drown _them in our own _blood _and _bury _them beneath our _dead_! Unite, my children! Show them that we do not fear them! Bring justice, equality, and freedom back to the human race! Fight with every last breath for the freedom of yourself and your people! Make them _pay _for the horrors they have inflicted upon us! Fight to bring _true peace and freedom _back to Earth and Her colonies, and wipe away the evil ones until not a hint of their vile taint on our kind's history remains! _Stand together!-! Join the fight for freedom!-! _…My brothers… my sisters… my people… _**it is time**_."

The broadcast then cut out, and after a few seconds it returned to the normal music. But the message was out. Billions across the worlds had heard this one transmission; those not yet part of the "growing numbers" had gotten their first introduction to the coming storm. Melody sat on her bed, eyes wide as she processed it all. Thick corruption in the Confederacy… a growing insurrection… Things were heating up. And one thing that Melody knew was that she wanted a piece of the action, to make a difference.

Two days later, she received an encrypted e-mail, untraceable and only readable from her personal terminal. And offer of admittance.

She accepted.

War was coming. In all its glory… and all its horror.

**-**_**CHAPTER END**_**-**

Gonna wait a few days before Chap. 2; gotta see responses. Please R&R, no flames/attacks, and visit & add to the Trope page


	2. Declaration

Shit's 'bout to get _real_.

SEE CHAPTER 1 FOR DISCLAIMERS

**-**_**CHAPTER START**_**-**

The Confederacy's corruption and covert oppression did not go unchallenged over the centuries. Countless small rebellions and insurrections popped up, but they were always either too disorganized or too small, and never cropped up on Sol due to the fear. Those that fell to the Confederacy were horribly punished; the leaders, in addition to being made _pennies_, were sometimes rejuved to the age of memory loss… while others were assassinated or executed. The few rebellions around in the modern era kept themselves well-hidden, waiting for any opportunity to strike at least a decisive blow somewhere on the Confederacy. Things looked bleak.

Until Grace Staunton-Howard entered the scene.

Grace Staunton had a slightly checkered past. As a teenager, she'd done some stupid things from hanging out with the wrong crowds, and that had gotten her time as a _Juvinala Penitatas_. She had long since realized the short-sighted stupidity of her actions back then, and had grown up much straighter, taking her assigned guardians' surname as her second one. In her life, she'd picked up quite a bit of leadership skills from various sources, and had also become a skilled orator. She'd garnered a bit of a following, and had discovered hints of the multiple rebellions-in-waiting, choosing to become an outspoken advocate of an overhaul of the system.

Apparently, someone had taken umbrage to this, and had gotten her framed for some white-collar crime. She thus found herself being unjustly saddled with a 4x10-12 sentence. However, she was far smarter than her "handlers", and she set into motion "Plan B". Through methods still unknown (she, to this day, refuses to divulge this particular secret), she came into contact with _all _of the various factions scattered across human space, including several hiding in the Sol System's worlds. She had worked hard to get them to coalesce into a single unified force. When the time came to decide a leader for this force, the factions unanimously elected Grace as leader, to her great surprise. Nonetheless, she accepted.

But they would need numbers to challenge the Confederacy, numbers that the newborn alliance didn't have. But a solution soon presented itself. Over their long, covertly-tyrannical rule, the Confederacy had forcefully rejuved billions of people for various reasons and through various methods. Billions of potential members of the rebellion. So she and her new "Council" sent out the call-to-arms, to those willing to help take the Confederacy down a few dozen pegs.

One of the people to heed the call was Ken Scott, an extraordinarily gifted slicer living on the border between the Inner and Outer Colonies. Due to his being a political idealist, he signed in. He was granted access to the rebellion's best tech, combined with his own genius, and he soon made a positively horrifying discovery: detailed personal records and data that showed just how horribly corrupt the Confederacy was, how many people they had unjustly crushed in one way or another, and various other things ranging from "unsavory" to "atrocity". This data galvanized the rebellion's resolve, and also led to a new decision: there would be no attempting to reform or change the Confederacy; it was far too corrupt and oppressive. It had to go. And force-of-arms would be the only reliable way to do it.

Howard, Scott, and the others got to work in continuing to clandestinely spread the word. They soon garnered not-insignificant numbers to their cause, while Mr. Scott got to work developing tech to aid in the coming strife.

Ken Scott's being betrayed by an associate (who was "killed in a hovercar accident" before he could blow the rebellion's cover) and being made into _penitatas _"Kate Compton" did little to slow the coming storm; within a month, he – or rather _she _– was again in contact with Grace, made easier because they were now on the same planet. Unlike all other rebellions the Confederacy had faced, this one would spring forth from right under its nose.

Through methods unknown, the unjustly-punished rejuves themselves were soon brought into the fold, informed of the situation and of the chance to strike back, a chance they readily accepted. The word spread to other sympathizers quickly as well, and the rebellion's hidden ranks began to swell further.

In August of 2550, the famed Confederate Navy Commander John Devine became a _Medicalos _stationed on Earth after a heroic near-sacrifice. He, a good-hearted man, had always been suspicious about "potential" corruption in the Confederacy, and had been planning a quiet investigation to see just how bad it was. Grace and Kate saved him the trouble, sending him the full data, to his horror. He readily signed up, soon being made Grace's second-in-command. The presence of a now-sector-renowned hero helped to increase the recruitment rate.

October 12th of 2550 provided the biggest boon to the rebellion yet. Droid expeditions sent out by the rebellion discovered something unfathomable: ancient and massive structures, well over 100,000 years old, buried and hidden beneath Antarctica, inside Olympus Mons on the terraformed Mars, and on the far side of the Moon. These structures, which used some sort of space-time manipulation to be several orders of magnitudebigger inside than outside, were quickly discovered to be some form of titanic war-forges, capable of pulling materials from any point in space-time and crafting weapons and vehicles of war. The schematics for their builders' tech were gone, deliberately erased as the facilities had been abandoned by their makers as they pulled back to their home dimension in a failed attempt to stem the tide of some great enemy (something about a "flood"), but the machines were more than capable of reaching across dimensions and acquiring schematics for weapons & vehicles used by extant military-possessing civilizations in different realms. Furthermore, these structures could teleport the finished products anywhere they were needed upon completion (even across interstellar distances), and/or keep them stored until they were needed. Now, the rebellion had an ever-growing number of troops _and _a method to get the hardware they needed.

Soon, these forges were set to work, reaching across the multiverse and acquiring schematics, and soon construction began on weapons and vehicles designed by other-realm military civilizations called the "United Nations Space Command", "Koprulu Sector", "Coalition of Ordered Governments", and "The Galactic Republic". Everything was constructed at extraordinary speed, ever unceasing – millions upon millions of vehicles, billions upon billions of weapons, and untold trillions of rounds of ammunition. And war tech wasn't the only thing produced. Computer technology, communications gear, medical technology, and various other things were produced; by far the most valuable would be UNSC encryption and hacking tech, and Republic and UNSC medical tech (bacta, biofoam, and the ability to flash-clone cells, tissues, and individual organs were all incalculably valuable).

Numbers for the rebellion continued to grow. On November 12th of 2550, Howard and Devine, with Scott-Compton's help, broadcasted across human space a transmission that acted as a call-to-arms to anyone willing to fight the Confederacy. It accomplished two things: it caused a further swell in numbers, and it spooked the Confederates, who were unable to even determine which sector of space it had come from, so good was Compton's work. Melody Marston-Johnson was amongst the newest explosive growth in numbers in response to the transmission.

On December 31st, 2550, after much deliberation, a name was bestowed upon this massive rebellion: the Phoenix Insurrectionist League. Grace was named Chairwoman, with Devine as her Vice-Chairman. The next day, a complex system was set up by the League to get their people ready to fight. With the debilitating functions of nano-webs not only neutralized, but _reversed_, the many rejuves of the League began to train, mentally and physically, for what would come. Their brains were altered to take in information at a quicker pace, so that training and study became _much _more productive. How did they get around the problem of vigilant penni-parents? That's later on in this chapter.

On January 31st of 2551, Kate Compton took a calculated risk. She had grown up in a neglectful household, and her current penni-parents were, in contrast to her birth ones, kind, attentive, loving, and all-around some of the best parents ever (in her humble opinion). She had come to love them, and she chose to bring them at least partially into the loop. To "test the waters", she showed them the truth behind the Confederacy's façade of fairness and peace, the countless examples of rampant corruption, greed, oppression, framing, and various things. Kelvin and Jane Compton were utterly horrified; the government they'd been working with was a monstrous dire-wolf in sheep's clothing. Satisfied by their reactions, Kate showed them the Insurrection. She was planning on solemnly leaving them behind as she went on to work and fight, feeling that they at least had earned the right to not be fooled about what their "daughter" was up to. She told them that she truly loved them, admitted her affection-starved upbringing and how she considered them to be her real parents. She apologized that she'd have to leave them to fight.

They shot this down by volunteering to join the League.

"We won't let you do this alone, chick" Jane had said. "You're our baby; there's no way in Hell we'd led you be without us."

"Besides…" Kelvin had continued, "If it means a chance to help take down those _monsters_, we're with you all the way."

After a tearful group-hug, the altruistic couple had formally signed up with the League. They worked to help with the covert cover-up to keep Kate free of punishments so she could devote all her attention to the League, and also volunteered to help provide what emotional support they could to whatever rejuved members needed it.

In early February, the main branch of the League, on Earth, received their physically-biggest asset: having reached across time and space, the Antarctica forge had found a damaged but serviceable vessel in orbit over the burnt world called Reach. The ship had been mission-killed, leaving its command crew dead and its other surviving personnel escaped via lifepod or dropship, but its weapons, reactor, and even its FTL drive intact (though the navigational data had been deliberately scoured by its previous owners). The forge accessed schematics and repaired the 485-meter-long vessel over the course of a month. The League now had its own UNSC _Burke_-class Destroyer to provide heavy muscle and fire-support, its original name still proudly displayed in slightly-singed white "paint" near the front of its arrowhead bow: _Black Talon_.

Preparations and recruitment continued at a steady pace, and soon the stage was set. All over human space, on practically every human-populated world, large cells of the Phoenix Insurrectionist League waited for the signal. However, this story will focus on the conflict on Earth - where the main branch of the League was stationed, where the heaviest fighting took place, and where the outcome of the war itself was decided.

On April 6th, 2551, an independent judicial investigation discovered Grace Staunton-Howard's innocence. From that day, the black "P" on her hand was replaced by a silver "I", the mark of an _Innocenta_. But this was far too little and far too late to stop what was coming.

On April 9th, the massive but scarcely-manned subterranean base formerly known as NORAD under the mountains of Colorado was isolated from the rest of the world by precision communications disruption, and then quickly taken over and made into a headquarters for the North America branch of the League, which was headed by none other than Grace and Devine themselves.

The powder keg was ready. Now to toss the lit match…

**-**_**SCENE BREAK**_**-**

**Confederation Hall (formerly United Nations Headquarters)**

**New York City, NY**

**April 10****th****, 2551**

The massive hall, filled with delegates from every human-controlled world and several from the nonhuman sapient races allied with the Confederacy (Jalaxian, Rigellian, and Drakonian), along with the two-dozen or so figures who made up the absolute peak of the Confederate leadership (President M'Butu and her Cabinet, military heads, and megacorp CEOs) went quiet as the massive screens along the north wall suddenly went fuzzy for several seconds, and then faded into clarity to show a single seated figure. She was wearing what was obviously a military officer's uniform, except one that was wholly different from the Confederacy's style… and from any other known races', for that matter. Her face was a mask of professionalism, but her eyes showed resolution, anger, and contempt. She looked around 10 physically, and her hands, folded in front of her, both showed a silver "I" on the back of each one.

"Leaders of the Confederacy" the girl began, far more calm and controlled than any 10-year-old could be naturally. "My name is Grace Staunton-Howard. I am an _Innocenta_, as you can see. I represent and lead the Phoenix Insurrectionist League. We are an organization stretching across all human-controlled worlds, the result of a merger between the various dissenting rebel factions and oppressed & disenfranchised peoples simmering under your government's oppressive and tyrannical rule. There are tremendous cells of us on all human worlds, especially here in the Sol System. We number in the billions. And, for all the oppression, all the concealed atrocities, all the deception, all the unforgivable crimes you have committed against the human race, we shall be the end of you."

Everyone in attendance stood in shocked silence, staring at the screen. Suddenly, reports came in.

"Sirs!" a man shouted. "Whoever's doing this has hacked it so it's being broadcast on every television and radio across the entire Sol System!"

"Ma'am!" another man shouted to the President. "We're getting reports of similar broadcasts by different individuals in every inhabited star system in the Confederacy! Inner _and _Outer Colonies!"

"Our slicers are just the tip of the iceberg in terms of our resources and capabilities" Grace announced.

"What do you want?" growled a man, the (corrupt) head of the Justice Department.

"Freedom. Truth. Vengeance. That sort of thing."

"Some detail would be nice, please" snarked the representative from planet Nadia in a deadpan tone. The man was known to maintain aloof calmness and unerring snarkiness no matter what he was faced with.

"For the last several centuries," Grace continued, "your arrogant, greedy, and hopelessly corrupt rule has caused billions to unjustly suffer. We are _well aware _of just how deep the corruption in the Confederacy goes, how many things you've done, how many people you've crushed to protect your own interests and made into _pennies _just because they tried to speak up for the right thing or even because they were just in the wrong place at the wrong time or knew too much, how many lies you've perpetrated, how many _unforgivable _acts you have performed."

"What basis do you have for these accusations, Ms. Staunton-Howard?" President M'Butu asked.

"President Akta M'Butu" Grace said, her voice and eyes softening slightly. "Thanks to our informants, we are well aware that you are _**not **_part of the titanic conspiracy enveloping the Confederacy. We know you are a genuinely kind soul, and are amongst the billions who have been led along by the Confederacy's long-running lies, carefully kept ignorant of just how far the government you have been fooled into believing you have any control over has fallen. You are a good person, and fighting against you will be one of the moral low-points of this conflict, but a necessary one. We hold no ill will towards you, Mrs. President, but the nature of the Confederacy – the corruption inherent in so many people and systems and positions - means that its existence can no longer be tolerated. We sincerely pray that you survive the coming conflicts."

The President stood shocked, and carefully made a concealed glance around her; some of the people were just as shocked as she was… but others looked more nervous than shocked, like a _penni _who'd been caught with both hands in the cookie jar. 'This is worrying…' she thought.

"After great deliberation, we, the Phoenix League, have come to the conclusion that the Confederacy is so fallen, so corrupt, so irreparably twisted into a dark perversion of its founding self, that the only way to rid the galaxy of this corrupted government… is by force of arms."

This drew unanimous reactions of shock, both from those in attendance at the hall and from everyone all over the Sol System who heard it.

"W-What do you mean by that?" asked the woman who represented the Education Board.

"For quite some time…" Grace said, "we have been using a series of automated forges left behind by a long-extinct race – not the ones who made the Rejuve tech, but possibly just as advanced - to create weapons and war-vehicles, and send them to each and every one of our cells across human space. We have been training intensively for this. Every last member of the Phoenix League is combat-trained personnel, and we are, each and every one of us, prepared to kill and prepared to die in order to achieve our freedom."

The screen then changed to show images and recordings of a proportionately-tiny fraction of the Phoenix League's armed forces and military hardware. Of course, "proportionately" meant that what was shown was still huge. But something else was of notice: a significant majority of personnel shown were rejuves.

"That," Grace said as her image returned, "was but a small fraction of our numbers and resources. We are the largest military force in all of human history."

"Furthermore," said another voice, "we are considerably better trained than the average Confederate soldier". As the owner came into picture, standing beside the still-seated Grace, people the world over gasped in shock.

"Ladies and gentlemen," Grace said, "I introduce you to my second-in-command."

Standing amongst the other military personnel in the Grand Hall, Rebecca Devine had but one thing to say: "Why?"

"Because, mother," John replied over the screen, "the things I have learned have convinced me that the Confederacy is truly, utterly irredeemable."

Two more figures stepped forth, both of them physically-young girls. The one standing to Grace's left was a girl with shoulder-length golden-blond hair, wearing the insignia of a Sergeant, and with a noticeable thin scar below her right eye, and a hardcore look in her eyes. The girl standing to John Devine's right had long light-blue hair in a low ponytail, and long, pointed ears; her face was another stoic, serious look, but her eyes seemed to be lacking in light a little.

"This," Grace gestured to the girl by her side, "is Melody. Perhaps you remember from the news the recent incident, before we found her, when she single-handedly beat the crap out of the Clyde Brothers? Or the incident before that, when a hacked Spank-Master nearly killed her? Melody was made a scapegoat in an embezzlement scam pulled by a rather high-ranking businessman. She has quickly become somewhat of a figurehead amongst the soldiers of the Sol branch of the League."

"Though sometimes I think I'm more of a mascot than a figurehead to some of them" Melody grumbled, clear enough for everyone to understand; Grace patted her on the shoulder.

"And this," John gestured to the not-quite-human next to him, "is Ishtar. She is a member of the Elvaan race, which you Confederates have yet to formally recognize the existence of. She was penalized terribly harshly by the Confederacy for merely following her government's orders. She was sent here on reconnaissance, to gather data on certain MIA members of the Elvaan Navy and bring the data back home. You Confederates responded to her carrying out her mission by making her into a Black Circle."

Several people gasped.

"Why was I not informed of this?-!" President M'Butu harshly asked her Chief of Nonhuman Sapient Relations, a weedy man who withered under her gaze.

"What's more…" Ishtar said in a quiet, slightly-shaking voice, "is that you denied me the final, most sacred rite of my people: my death. I was reaching the end of my species' lifespan, and was preparing to abscond with the data, send it to my superiors, and allow myself to fall into my last eternal sleep, drifting through space for eternity with my ship as my coffin. Death is considered a natural facet of life, to be avoided if possible but embraced if not. That you humans use your "rejuve" tech to flee from and postpone death is not, in itself, wrong. But that you would deny people an honorable end, punish them for not holding up to _your _"standards" and "methods", refuse to grant the warriors of other cultures you face in battle the honor of a death in combat, choosing instead to demean them, _destroy _them, by reducing them to helpless, de-aged prisoners to suffer in indignity… is _unforgivable_! You didn't save my life! You ruined my death! And what's worse, you turned me into a helpless little child, and took my body's purity for your own sick pleasure! You… _demons!-!_"

At this point, she could no longer speak coherently, Melody walking over to her and pulling her into a hug, the Elvaan girl burying her face in Mel's shoulder and crying softly.

"Ishtar is but one of countless people you Confederates have made suffer unjustly over the centuries" Grace said darkly, her and John giving simultaneous death-glares into the camera that made children (and many adults) watching the broadcast shudder and quake and feel like they were looking down the barrel of a blaster. Grace then turned to behind her seat.

"Compton! Your turn for exhibition!"

The holocam's view shifted as the camera droid hovered several feet up, allowing it view of behind the desk that Grace was seated at. Some lights came on as the droid moved forward and then took up position at its previous altitude but now on the other side of Grace's "throne", revealing a black-haired girl with a sly grin on her face, standing near a holo-projector.

"This" Grace's voice said from off-camera, "is Kate Compton, born Ken Scott. He/she was and is one of our most important members – the head of our Military Intelligence Division, our chief engineer, and one of the most gifted slicers in human history. Her contributions, as Ken _and _as Kate, have been truly invaluable. She's about to tell you some of the ways we've circumvented the problems of having people who are physically children make up a significant majority of our forces. You'll have to excuse how… peppy… she is for this; she has long since disabled her own nano-web, but she has a touch of salesman in her when she's showing off her tech."

"I heard that" Kate said, "and I agree with it. Well, first let me explain how our minds, which you Confederates sought to cripple with nano-webs and childish bodies, have been dealt with. During production, I dubbed the solution "Project Aphrodite", because I codenamed all my big Projects after Greek deities that fitted them, but couldn't find one that fit this project well, so I reached into a metaphorical hat and pulled out "Aphrodite". For quite some time, I've had and used my personally-devised tech that can reprogram nanites _in situ _or pre-implantation. I also had a cell-sized neural implant that deactivated my nano-web, which activated about a month after I was rejuved. What I've done with Project Aphrodite is to enact further changes to the implants. Now, not only is the nano-web's default function deactivated, it's _reversed_. Childlike impulses are completely suppressed, and clarity of thought and emotional control the likes of which an immature mind cannot achieve is given. In short: we are adults in all but physical form.

"What's more, I've also introduced another humongous upgrade to our neural nets. It lets the human brain safely gather and process new information at a considerably higher rate than normal, and allows people to literally learn things much more quickly and with less effort than the average human brain can. Training and study produces better results much sooner. This augmentation is for _all _our personnel, not just rejuves. Lastly, we of the Black Ops divisions had nanobot-based sensory enhancements, allowing us to see, hear, and smell things normal humans can't. And yes, I solved the issue that caused that 10,000-dead tragedy a couple of decades back. I'm also working on superconducting fibrification of neural dendrites, to boost the performance of shock troopers' and Black-Ops field personnel's central nervous systems.

Kate took a drink of water before continuing. "Now, as for our bodies – how are we who are physically children supposed to perform on the battlefield? I present to you… Project Heracles!"

From the shadows stepped out the girl known as Dani Wilson-Roberts. But something was very eye-catchingly different. For one, her seven-year-old 1.34-meter-tall body was now clad in dull-grey armor, which added a couple of inches to her height. Only her head was visible, and that was soon mitigated as she brought forth a full-head helmet and pulled it on, an HUD visor obscuring her face. The armor somehow looked both streamlined and slightly bulky at the same time.

"This" Kate announced "is the Mark-IV _Heracles_-class Powered Armor. Powered by a miniature – and very stable – fusion reactor located in the upper rear torso section, this device amplifies the wearer's physical strength, speed, agility, and endurance. It has an integrated air supply for up to 35 minutes, and is controlled partly through the user's natural movements and partly via a link to a standard-issue neural implant in the back of the skull. The models used by our Blackfire Phoenix shock-troopers and our Spec-Ops & Black-Ops personnel have decent-strength recharging energy shields, too. Wearing these, a physically-young soldier has strength somewhere above the average adult human. Our physically-adult combat personnel have the same type of armor, but the strength enhancement isn't quite as high. That said, though, every single member of our forces has trained their bodies to peak physical condition."

The people were stunned. Such extraordinary technological advances… and they were in the hands of a hostile power? After several seconds, the head of the Justice Department spoke up.

"H-How have you gotten soldiers prepared for all this? Especially rejuves, who are under watch by their assigned guardians…"

Kate laughed. "That was one of the most ambitious of our projects. We found, through our super-forges' trans-dimensional links, a way to create a unique type of clone. Unlike any "typical" clone, these were created as exact duplicates of their progenitors, with full memories _and _knowledge of what they are. What's more, they'll never technically die, since when they cease to be, every single memory and experience they've gathered in their existence will be instantaneously transferred back to the progenitor. It's less 'cloning' and more 'one person becomes two for a period of time and then merges back into one', for lack of a better description. Of course, due to… something… we can't make any more, but these were really all we needed to. Ma'am?"

Grace nodded, and a signal was sent out. All across human space, billions of rejuved individuals, from _Innocenta _to Black Circle, gave varying expressions (none quite negative) and then abruptly vanished in puffs of "smoke" (actually their bodies breaking down at an atomic level), often in full view of their horrified "guardians" as the broadcast continued to issue forth over their TVs and radios. A second later, every person who had a Duplicate was briefly incapacitated as their minds sorted through the flood of memories (good and bad, praises and punishments), the little pieces of their souls returning to rejoin the whole. The reports on this phenomenon quickly found their way to the people in The Hall, but they were all too stunned to say anything about it.

"As our split-selves lived our public lives," Grace said as the camera-droid returned to her and those around her, "we have been training and studying intensely, honing our minds and bodies to the closest to perfection that we could bring them to. Military tactics and strategies, necessary sciences and skills, martial-arts, CQC, weapons usage… we have trained _intensively _for it all. For what will now truly begin."

"What beginning do you speak of?" said President M'Butu, her stoic voice masking the emotional turmoil she and everyone else felt.

Grace's voice rose, anger and conviction seeping into it. "For the tyranny you have subjected the people to… For the lies you have propagated… For the atrocities you have committed… For the sake of the human race… On this day, the 10th of April in the year of 2551 AD… we, the Phoenix Insurrectionist League… hereby formally declare war upon the Sol Confederacy!"

Reactions ranging from disbelief to shock to horror to outrage resounded through the Hall, across the nation, across the planet, across the system, across all human space.

"Ready yourselves" Grace spoke with an iron tone. "The first large-scale human-against-human conflict in over 500 years has begun… and Mother Earth will, after so long, again feel the fires of war…"

With that, the transmission ended; all across the Sol System, the verbal conflict between this new force and The Hall came to its end, the system-wide slicing of all communications disengaging and returning regular programming to the utterly shocked populace. In The Hall, shock and silence reigned.

"Well…" said the suave voice of the Jalaxian ambassador. "Nice to see that our suspicions of corruption amongst humanity seem to have some truth to them, and that somebody's standing up for the little guy."

"(What nonsense do you speak, feline?-!)" came the hisses and growls of the angry Drakonian ambassador, translated by ear implants of those who didn't know the Drakonian tongue. "(These rebels dare to level such accusations?-! We have lived alongside the humans for centuries and have never seen the "corruption" they have accused!)"

"You weren't looking hard enough, then!" snapped the Jalaxian ambassador.

The Hall soon dissolved into rampant shouting between all parties, all with President M'Butu trying in vain to restore order while the Rigellian ambassador quietly slinked out, on his way to inform his people of the coming conflict and recommend evacuation of all human-controlled worlds until it had come to its eventual conclusion, however long it may last.

As he left, the Rigellian remembered a prophecy he had heard made by a psychically-adept human child four years earlier:

"_A war is coming. I've seen it in my dreams. Fires sweeping over the Earth, bodies in the streets, cities turned to dust… retaliation. The bloodiest war the galaxy has seen in over forty thousand years… is coming…_"

**-**_**CHAPTER END**_**-**

Please R&R, be nice, and remember to tend to the TV-Tropes page(s) if you so choose.


	3. Fires of War

Speech! Speech! Speech!

SEE CHAPTER 1 FOR DISCLAIMERS

And remember: there's fighting going on all over human space, _but this story focuses solely on the Earth side of the conflict_.

**-**_**CHAPTER START**_**-**

It has been one day since the worldview-changing broadcasts played throughout all of human space. One day since war was declared against the Sol Confederacy by a well-trained, well-equipped, and utterly massive rebellion. Reactions varied amongst the people. Some were still in shock that such a thing could happen. Some refused to believe it, claiming it a hoax despite the fact that the top slicers employed by the Confederacy's Internal Security had determined that this was indeed a real, honest-to-god transmission, not fabricated by anyone. Some were angry, having long since bought in to the Confederacy's lies and illusions of benevolence and seeing this group as "naughty pennies" and uncivilized rebels led by an _Innocenta _who took her desire for vengeance _way _too far. Still others were actually relieved or happy, people who either suspected the Confederacy's corruption, or knew about it but didn't have the will to stand up and do something.

The Confederacy had been scouring the planet via orbital satellites, but had not found anything, thanks to extraordinarily advanced Stealth-Tech, the remoteness of the League's main gathering grounds, and some good old-fashioned hacking of the satellites by the League.

The searching was interrupted as another transmission was shown to the populace. This one was wholly different in structure: a series of camera-droids were recording what was about to transpire, and at the same time they were broadcasting it, to show the people that this was real, to show the League's resolve and mission, to show a somewhat-larger hint of what the League had ready to bring to bear against the Confederacy.

**-**_**SCENE BREAK**_**-**

**Somewhere near what was once NORAD HQ**

**Colorado, US**

**April 11****th****, 2551**

"We are no strangers to conflict."

The view showed a crowd of uncountable numbers standing before an open "stage". Atop said stage, Grace Staunton-Howard stood in full military regalia; behind her stood several other high-ranking individuals of the League.

"After all, humans have been fighting since long before history began to be recorded, since we first developed the physical and mental ability to forge and wield even the most basic weapons, and we have had dozens of millennia of practice since then. War is one thing that we undeniably know."

She paused, and every soul awaited her next words with baited breath.

"In the past, we as a species have fought each other for countless things. We've fought for resources. We've fought for vengeance. We've fought for territory. We've fought for ideals. We've fought simply for the bloodshed of it. We've fought for ourselves… and for others. And this… will be little different."

A pack of dropships of various types soared overhead, each inbound to a different location. Regardless of what civilization had designed them originally, all of them now bore the mixture of gunmetal gray, dull green, and fiery orange of the Phoenix League military. View switched to another camera-droid that tracked and flew alongside a few of them.

"For over 300 years, we have fought against an oppressive government the scale of which was previously unimaginable. As we suffered, we attempted to gain our rights and freedom through diplomacy, negotiations, peaceful protests, and other nonviolent and "legal" means that resulted in nothing but harsh and terrible punishments for daring to voice our discontent. That is a tactic that we cannot continue. The Confederacy will utterly consume the human race… unless we rid our worlds of it… _now_."

One camera-droid homed in on a Republic-built LAAT/I dropship, its large side-doors wide open. Inside the open troop-bay sat or stood four rejuve-form soldiers, a fifth physically-adult standing by the rear port section, watching the scenery pass beneath them. One of the physically-children had their helmets off, her shoulder-length golden-blond hair blowing in the wind and framing her serious face. The droid flew in close enough that the ensuing conversation could be heard clearly.

"So why do we need to take NC for a base location, Sergeant?" said Kevin Lockhart, his voice ever-so-slightly muffled by his helmet as he referred to a planned major target of the North American branch of the Earth branch of the PIL. "Why not just keep this place as our big HQ?"

"That's exactly what we're going to do, Private" Mel Johnson replied, as she sent the signal to the nanites waiting in her hair, which rapidly began to change color, darkening as the pigmentation itself was altered rather than just a dye-job (another wonder of mid-26th-century tech). "Colorado will remain an important base. But we can't have it as our only one. We need major footholds against the Confederates, and places to set up more bases from which to launch attacks. We're gonna leapfrog our way across the continent."

"Heard there's a shitload of Confeds over there, Sergeant!"

Melody allowed herself a smirk as the permanent change in her hair's pigmentation was complete. "More like _ten _shitloads."

The view switched to another pack of camera-droids, showing as millions of soldiers readied themselves and their gear, M12 Warthog LRVs escorting a trio of AT-TE walkers, King Raven helicopter gunships dropping off and picking up various supplies, a pair of "Goliath" mech-walkers leading a group of AT-PTs with several M274 Mongooses drove around and past them.

"We had hoped that nonviolent methods would weaken their resolve. But they withstood, and have since clamped down upon us harder than ever."

The view returned to Grace as she continued her speech.

"They've progressed to the point where those who fall before them run the risk of having their very minds wiped! Even the sanctity of our inner thoughts is now at risk!"

View returned to that one gunship, as Melody pulled out a photograph of a girl she'd met during her time as a _penni_. A sweet little girl who had lived next door. A girl who'd committed suicide due to the stress of what she had been put through.

"For the sake of all of us, the Confederacy must be deposed. Negotiations, protests, independence movements, countless other efforts… all failed. And that leaves us with only one option…"

View shifted as the camera-droid turned its focus away from the interior of the dropship and towards where it and several others was headed: an utterly _massive _gathering of soldiers and military hardware, while 320 meters above them hovered the black-armored, arrowhead-like structure of the 485-meter-long _Burke_-class destroyer _Black Talon_, dozens of dropships and fighters buzzing around.

"…_Attack_."

Views shifted further: soldiers stockpiling weapons; a convoy of M808B 'Scorpion' Main Battle Tanks rolling down a dirt path while the less powerful and durable but faster and more nimble COG-built 'Centaur' light tanks rolled around and past them; a UNSC-built AC220 'Vulture' heavy gunship roaring over the heads of the crews working on a small depot of Koprulu-built 'Vulture' speeder-bikes and a massive Republic-built SPHA-T artillery walker.

"My friends… What I ask of you is not an easy task by any stretch of the imagination. But it is a necessary one. If we are to be victorious… If we are to be able to watch the rise & fall of the Sun as free men & women, to see our own children grow, and to experience a time of peace and freedom humanity has not known for centuries… we must now… take this fight… _to the Confederacy_!"

Again the focus returned to Grace, whose words were now more heated.

"We will strike out, we will find where they hide, where they lounge in luxury while the people suffer… and _we will destroy them_!"

A cheer rang out from the ranks.

"This war will be when we, at long last, take our righteous fight to the heart of our enemy! This war will correct the course of human history! _This war will restore our freedom and honor as a species!-!_"

Their blood was boiling now, the call of battle beckoning.

"Soldiers of the flame… my phoenixes… _fly forth, and bring back the freedom of humanity!-!-!_"

As she finished, she thrusted her fists skyward, the backs pointed toward the crowd to reveal the matching twin tattoos of the mythical firebird, and in response a thunderous cheer shook the Earth, as millions of people shouted out across the massive military installation, mirrored in all the other "gathering spots" across the Sol System as they tuned in to the broadcast.

**-**_**SCENE BREAK**_**-**

Three major cells of League forces on Earth alone – one in Colorado, one in Antarctica, and one in the northern part of the Krasnoyarsk region of Russia - all of them humongous.

The next day, all Confederate communications to & from Earth ceased, though not before word was received that fighting had started on Mars, on the Moon, and on Ganymede and Titan (the two gas-giant moons that the Confederacy had gone to the trouble to terraform and populate).

The first attacks were quick, efficient, and brutal. The League struck out from their "bases", a combination of numbers, superior training, better weapons & tech, and shooting to kill (which was something that _nobody _really did anymore in war under the Confederacy's oversight, working instead to disable enemy tech and/or to capture and rejuve enemy soldiers) allowing them to roll right over Confederate forces in their way. The Confederacy was horrified and stunned at the speed and ease with which the League advanced right off the bat, with the Confeds suffering significant fatalities and captures while the League took hardly any losses, and most of those were self-terminations to avoid capture by the Confederates. By April 17th, the _blitzkrieg _launched from Colorado had netted the League control over Wyoming, Utah, Arizona, Nevada, Idaho, Montana, the northwest sector of New Mexico, the eastern edge of California, and the western portions of Nebraska & Kansas. At the same time, the Russian group had gained control over most of north-central Russia. The League, of course, allowed civilians to escape relatively un-harassed and in fact maintained very strict protocols regarding the treatment of civilians, except for those proven to have positions in the massive corruption/conspiracy of the Confederacy.

A second wave of blitzes was soon launched, one of the larger battles being to gain control of New Chicago, the megalopolis that was home to several high-ranking individuals of the Confederate corruption.

**-**_**SCENE BREAK**_**-**

**New Chicago, IL**

**April 27****th****, 2551**

The D77-TC "Pelican" Dropship marked as Victor-914 flew over the city's outskirts, one of six dropships making this particular run. Its pilot, Kelvin "Father Hawk" Compton, checked the data scrolling across his Pilot's HUD, seeing everything reading as all-clear. He glanced out to the left of the craft, seeing the King Raven helicopter dropship/gunship Alpha-52 and the modified LAAT/I _Baron-1_, the latter piloted by his wife, Jane "Mother Hawk" Compton (as for their adopted daughter? Well, nobody expects someone with the unassuming title "Hawk Chick" to be head of Black Ops and Military Intelligence). To his right flew the Koprulu-Sector-made Quantradyne APOD-33 dropship Xi-47, the King Raven Delta-45, and the Pelican Oscar-551.

Inside the troop compartment of Victor-914, a Special-Ops team readied themselves, checking weapons and ensuring that their energy-shielded armor was working properly. Sergeant Melody Marston-Johnson surveyed her team, making a mental checklist as she went. Corporal Taylor, the team medic (that particular part of the Geneva Conventions that forbade medics from engaging in active combat had been tossed aside a couple of centuries back), was checking his M90A shotgun, ensuring he had plenty of shells for it in his hip-mounted satchel. PFC Newman, an ambitious and excitable fellow, readied his MA5B assault rifle. Sitting next to Melody was Miles Fairbrass, and on his other side was Harry Henriksen. Miles, Harry, and Melody had been friends ever since they were all _Kindern _("natural" children, i.e. not rejuves), and were as close as siblings. Miles fiddled with an M319 grenade launcher, while Harry wielded a downsized Koprulu-made C-14 assault rifle. Melody herself carried a UNSC BR55HB-SR rifle and a pair of customized KYD-21 blaster pistols, the latter with add-ons (IR scopes, switchable "muzzles", double-capacity power packs, energy-bayonet projectors) and a custom blue-and-red paint job hand-picked by Melody.

The figure seated near the door to the cockpit, carrying a datapad with Confederate access codes, a Koprulu-made C-10 Mark-V sniper rifle, and a vintage yet fully functional mid-20th-century revolver, had Melody wary: Second-Lieutenant Jane Smythe. Smythe had been responsible for more than one chunk of suffering in Melody's past, but now she claimed to have had her change of heart. She was also one of the less than 200 individuals (on Earth, anyway) who had volunteered for an experimental and potentially extremely-dangerous procedure of "de-juving", physically aging their bodies up by three years, boosting Jane from a four-year-old body to a seven-year-old one like Melody's (Ishtar had undergone the same treatment, hopping from four to seven). She acted as an ally and member of the PIL, but Mel would be keeping a close eye on her; that was for damn sure.

Ahead, the battle for New Chicago – the humongous expanse of a city that had long since swallowed up "smaller" locales that once surrounded "Old" Chicago, which was now the city's core – continued to rage. New Chicago was home to a small but notable number of business headquarters for groups whose higher-ups participated in the Confederacy's conspiracy of corruption, as well as a Confederate Army Base; these two factors made it a priority-one target for the Phoenix League. The 21st Division had been sent in two days earlier, and had been making good progress towards claiming the city for the League. They had, however, run into a few small difficulties. Hence, the League was deploying a group of Special-Ops – Melody & her team along with three other teams – and two squads of "Blackfire Phoenix" shock-troopers.

The sextet of dropships flew over the League-controlled portion of the city (i.e. most of it) and then entered the contested areas. A pair of Confederate soldiers who had dumped their chronostatic radiation weapons (which were pretty much totally ineffective against the _Heracles_-class powered armor the League wore) for a stolen M19 rocket launcher fired a shot at Xi-47; the rocket narrowly missed due to the angle of approach, shooting off harmlessly into the distance; _Baron-1 _responded by firing its forward guns, the vehicle-grade blaster bolts burning huge holes through the enemy soldiers' chests. Alpha-52 and Delta-45 peeled off, the two King Ravens carrying a group of shock-troopers to the western sector of the contested areas, where the fighting was heaviest.

The remaining four dropships were all headed towards one place, on the east edge of the city: a series of four identical 44-story towers that surrounded a massive, 122-story tower – the headquarters of Rev-Tech Industries, who were one of three companies hired by the Confederate military to develop new weapons. Word had it that Rev-Tech was working on a weaponized form of the emergency medical rejuvenation machines, which could forcefully rejuve anyone they hit, to the point where their bodies would be incapable of any form of combat. They were probably just rumors, but the combination of "What if it's true?" panic and the fact that the company was still a weapons manufacturer made this place a prime target for the League. Unfortunately, Rev-Tech was aware of this, and had constructed a powerful energy shield to protect their main headquarters, projected from the four comparatively-smaller towers that surrounded it. The towers' regular workers had long since evacuated, with Confederate soldiers and the Rev-Tech CEO and Board of Directors now the only ones in there.

Thus, four Special-Ops teams were being sent in to disable the shield generators, to give the main forces the chance to take (or take out) the tower. Melody and Smythe's team would be handling the northwest tower; the southwest tower would be dealt with by Jacob Griffin and Michael Walcroft's team; the northeast tower by Samuel Kelly's team; and the southeast tower by Zach Tinder's squad.

Victor-914 shuddered lightly as it loosed a small barrage of missiles at the Confederate AA Ion Cannon atop the northwest tower, slagging the weapon and allowing the dropship to swoop in unmolested, swinging around and bringing the now-opening rear hatch up to a fairly-sized platform. As soon as the door was down, the half-dozen Spec-Ops soldiers of the League leapt out, their dark-colored armor covered by a barely-visible haze that was the active energy shielding, their faces obscured by silver-blue HUD visors. A Confederate army trooper came out from the door they were heading for, only for Corporal Taylor to blast him with his shotgun twice, the first blast sending sparks and blood flying as it punched through the Confed's armor and left shoulder joint, while the second hit him right in the heart, the buckshot pellets shredding said organ and knocking the man onto his back, where he lay still and stopped breathing. The team moved in, stepping over the body and moving into the facility.

Smythe plugged her TACPAD into a computer output, and within several seconds everyone on the team had a detailed map of all of the floors that they'd be working on/through uploaded to their suits. The goal was two floors above them, and there were two routes up: one was to head left, go up the stairs to the next level, fight through plenty of guards to reach the stairs to the third level, and go up there; the other way was to head right, fight through a fairly large amount of guards, go up, fight through a small amount of enemies, and go up again. The two teams moved out – Melody, Miles, and Harry went right, while Smythe, Taylor, and Newman headed left.

Harry took point, assault rifle at the ready, while Melody, twin blaster pistols in hand, went second, and Miles & his grenade launcher brought up the rear. They came to the first door; Harry, in less than a second's time, cracked it open, tossed in a flash-bang grenade, and pulled it closed. There was a loud bang muffled by the door, a bright flash from the other side, and several cries of alarm and pain. He then rushed through the open door and gunned down four temporarily-blinded Confederate soldiers, while Melody opened fire with her twin blaster pistols, gunning down a trio of Confederate war-droids whose optics and audio-receptors had been overloaded by the flash-bang.

"Clear right" Melody said.

"Clear center" Miles said after sweeping the area with his grenade launcher at the ready.

"Clear left" Harry added in.

"Move out" Melody ordered, and the trio advanced toward the next room. A trio of guards was coming in from the hallway on the opposite side, only to die when a shot from Miles' grenade launcher hit the middle one in the head and detonated on impact, killing all three. Melody led the advance into the hallway, firing her BR from the shoulder at two more Confederate troopers coming in from the doorway at the other end, punching bloody holes through their skulls with her shots. The trio moved into the next room, Harry throwing a frag grenade that took out two Confederate battle droids and damaged three more, which Miles put down with two shots from his grenade launcher. The trio then took cover and began picking off the other war-droids and Confederate troopers in this larger room, their shields letting them shrug off what few hits they took as they methodically gunned down their foes. The last foe, a Confederate army trooper, went down from a blaster-bolt to the throat, courtesy of Melody.

They approached the stairs, Melody leading and using one of her blaster pistols to gun down a Confederate trooper who tried to get the drop on them. The small bit of the next floor up that they needed to get through was guarded by a single Confederate heavy war droid. An EMP shot from Miles' grenade launcher briefly stunned it, allowing Melody and Harry to concentrate fire on its head module, taking out its optics and then its central processing unit, the now-lifeless hunk of metal keeling over and hitting the floor with a thud. The trio moved around it and to the final flight of stairs.

As the trio emerged in the corridor at the top of the stairs, they ran into the other team.

"Walcroft & Griffin's team have already disabled their tower's shield projector" Smythe reported. "Samuel's team is fighting through their last guards now, and Tinder's squad is about to take theirs on, just like us."

"Let's bust 'em, then" Cpl. Taylor said.

The team walked up to the final door, and as it slid open a barrage of enemy fire came out, Miles managing to fire off a grenade that killed two Confederate soldiers before he ducked out of the way, the beeping sound in his ears notifying him of low shields; after several seconds, they recharged to full. After the fire abated, Melody readied her blasters and ran in, firing as she moved a little ways in and got behind cover; her fire took down a trio of Confederate war droids and wounded a Confederate soldier in the arm, causing him to drop his rifle. A heavy war-droid armed with a stasis grenade launcher stood at the back of the room, and was preparing to fire one at Melody's cover spot until a 14.5mm APFSDS round tore through its chest compartment at supersonic speed, punching clean through its power core and causing it to collapse to the ground inert; the loud bang of Smythe's sniper rifle caught some of the Confederates by surprise, leaving two of them easy prey for two follow-up shots. PFC Newman had gone right, getting behind a Confederate trooper and opening fire with his assault rifle, taking the surprised soldier down.

"_This is Sgt. Kelly_" a boy's voice came over the comm. "_Northeast tower is down_."

A bang sounded as Cpl. Taylor used his shotgun to blow the leg off of a war-droid, finishing it off with another close-range blast to the head. Melody's twin pistols took down four more Confederate soldiers, and a final one took a shot between the eyes from Smythe's revolver. Smythe then jogged toward the shield control terminal.

"_This is SSgt. Tinder. Southeast tower is clear._"

Smythe plugged her TACPAD into the terminal. After several seconds, the green display light turned orange, and the screen showed the shield disengaging.

"This is 2LT Smythe" she said into the radio. "Northeast tower is clear."

"_Solid copy_" said the voice of Jake Whitmore, the former (pre-War) police dispatcher and now "mission control" for the New Chicago op. "_All teams fall back to extraction; we got somethin' big for demo_."

The team hurried their way down and out, soon reaching the landing pad where they'd been dropped off, finding Baron-1 waiting for them. They piled in, and the LAAT/I took off, flying away from the tower, soon joined by the other three dropships. The crackling energy field that had previously been projected from the four smaller towers onto the big one was gone. The quartet of dropships got some distance away from the tower, and Baron-1's side doors were open, giving the team a clear view as, to their surprise, the _Black Talon _approached from the west, flying level and pointed towards the 122-story Rev-Tech tower.

There was a devastating and wonderful sound as a (comparatively) very-low-power shot from the destroyer's MAC tore through the main tower about a third of the way up from the ground. The structure promptly began to fall, collapsing in on itself and toppling over, amidst the cheers of League personnel.

After several seconds, the voice of the _Black Talon_'s commander came over the comm.

"_All League forces, we have just received word that the Confederacy is in full retreat from New Chicago and the surrounding areas. We have won; New Chicago is ours!_"

Even from high in the air, the people aboard the dropships could hear the cheering of untold numbers of League personnel across the city, and they added their voices to it.

**-**_**SCENE BREAK**_**-**

The second wave of advances, which lasted until the end of April, netted the USA branch of the Phoenix League control over Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois (New Chicago becomes a forward base), Missouri, Arkansas, Oklahoma, the rest of New Mexico & California, Oregon, and Washington. The Russian branch had gained most of eastern Russia, while the Antarctica branch had claimed most of Australia by the eve of May. Elsewhere in the Sol System, the League had managed to oust the Confederacy from the enclosed colonies on Luna, a solid half of the terraformed Mars was under League control, and the League also had full control of the colonies on Ganymede and Titan, leaving the isolated research outposts on Triton and Pluto the only remaining Confederate positions beyond the asteroid belt.

Fighting continued, but even after losing huge chunks of territory, the Confederacy still stubbornly refused to recognize the League as a political entity or to officially recognize the state of war, continuing to refer to the League as "dissidents, deviants, and naughty pennies making a little rebellion". However, a fairly good-sized portion of the Confederate military and personnel who'd been stationed in the parts of North America now under League control had fallen back to the east; two of the largest such locales were the Confederate military-industrial powerhouses in Detroit, Michigan and Memphis, Tennessee. Both cities contained dozens of millions of Confederate armed forces personnel & hardware, support personnel, and civilian & semi-civilian Confederate sympathizers (and more than a few of the "Conspiracy of Corruption" people). These had been made into "fortress cities" that would take a great deal of time, effort, and lives for the League to take in the traditional matter.

So they chose a different method…

**-**_**SCENE BREAK**_**-**

**TransTech Headquarters**

**Detroit, MI**

**May 6****th****, 2551**

Michael Waltrip, CEO of the company TransTech Industries and thus the man in charge of the company who discreetly worked to develop more efficient chronostatic radiation weaponry for the Confederacy, stared out the window of his 97th-floor office, looking out at the massive Confederate stronghold-city below. He sighed as he remembered the ambitious task he'd been assigned in the wake of the loss of Rev-Tech's weaponized rejuve research (which, contrary to the rumor mill, had, before its destruction, been encountering setback after setback after setback, becoming somewhat of a black hole for funds) to develop more effective and quicker-acting radiation weapons for the Confederate military. Far below, the city worked in tight control, most of its Confederate-sympathizing civilians spending their time in shelters built to withstand the powerful weaponry the rebellion had thus far showed (granted, that obscenely powerful coilgun on their ship would be able to obliterate said shelters, but heavy AA protection made it too risky for the destroyer to approach the city), while soldiers and armored vehicles patrolled the streets and borders.

Waltrip's attention was drawn to a faint light in the sky. The light was coming closer, and getting lower. As it got even closer after a little while, he could see it was coming almost straight down from high up… _very _high up, possibly. As it passed the tips of the tallest towers of the city, less than 1000 meters from his office, Waltrip could see a flash of grayish-silver and white.

There was a brilliant blinding flash, which seared Waltrip's eyes, but before he could recoil in pain he ceased to exist, as did everyone else within a few kilometers. The bunkers/shelters were unable to hold up, not built to withstand a type of weapon not seen in centuries. The devastating shockwave flattened a humongous portion of the city, incredible heat flash-vaporizing millions of Confederates and their wargear. As the light slowly faded, from several kilometers away a truly humongous mushroom cloud could be seen very slowly rising high into the stratosphere over the burnt, flattened, slagged scene of absolute devastation that was once Detroit; several hundred kilometers to the southeast, Memphis was going through an identical ordeal.

**-**_**SCENE BREAK**_**-**

The usage of two of the _Black Talon_'s four _Shiva_-class fusion warheads to obliterate the Confederate strongholds of Detroit and Memphis in a pair of 65-megaton thermonuclear detonations shocked and terrified many in the Confederacy; that these rebels, in addition to their numbers and their technology and war machines and their ship, had access to such infamous historical weapons of mass destruction came as great shock. In addition, a great blow had been dealt to the Confederate's military capacity in the USA. On that very day, as if signaled by the twin nukes (in fact, they likely _were_), cells of League-led resistance cropped up all over the planet, gaining huge ground quickly. In the Middle East, League-backed revolutions gained near-total control in Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Oman, the UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, & Iraq, while resistance cells gained strong footholds in Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Palestine, & Jordan. In Europe, a few southeastern nations (Turkey, Romania, parts of Greece) became the site of considerable League presence, and the few remaining League supporters in the rest of Europe used the confusion to escape behind friendly lines. The rest of Australia fell into League hands, and the League gained a position in the north-most portions of China.

On May 7th, a fleet of Confederate ships – 14 Rio-class frigates (430 meters), eight _Wave_-class destroyers (460m), three _Pacific-_class cruisers (855m), and a _Poseidon_-class carrier (1.75 kilometers) – came out of hyperspace into Earth's high orbit. The Terran Confederate's leadership's hopes of reinforcements were coldly cut short as transmissions made it clear that the crews of all the ships were League members, come to report that the League's forces had swung into action across human space, and to support the Sol System League personnel by providing soldiers and enforcing a blockade of the system to keep Confederate reinforcements from reaching Earth or Mars… and also confirming that Confederate communications between star systems were now down.

The next day, the Sol Confederacy finally, publicly renounced the Phoenix Insurrectionist League's status as "deviants, angry peasants, and naughty pennies", classifying them as a separate political entity and a serious military threat. With that, the Confederate military mobilized in full; however, it soon became clear that the Confederate military was _badly _outnumbered (approximately 6.4 to 1, to be exact, if you take human-space-wide numbers for both sides) and that the League possessed superior morale & conviction, weaponry, and (due to Confederate complacency due to the previous long stretch of peace) training quality. A diplomat from the Confederacy was sent out to discuss things, but talks fell through (at one point, Mel Johnson remarked to the diplomat, in response to said man's comments, "I guess you wouldn't be a Confederate if you weren't a _complete _pain in the ass") and the state of war was formally recognized by the Confederate leadership.

The Confederacy, outmatched that they were, nonetheless readied themselves, while the League tended to itself and continued to advance. The battle for Earth, World War 4, had officially begun.

**-**_**CHAPTER END**_**-**


	4. SpecOps

The tide of war rolls on.

SEE CHAPTER 1 FOR DISCLAIMERS

**-**_**CHAPTER START**_**-**

Even with the Confederacy finally taking the League seriously, little could be done to stem the tide of the League's advances across the planet. By the first of July 2551, the North America branch of the League had gained control of most of Mexico and Canada, as well as all US states except the eastern half of Kentucky, North Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia & West Virginia, Ohio, Maryland & Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York (the Confederate U.S. capital state), and the small states east of New York. Japan, the Oceania nations, most of the eastern Middle East, and the southern tip of South America were in League control as well, with the Eurasia branch now under the leadership of the legendary _Volintaras _Leonid Dragovich, the man/boy who had, in his previous live-through, single-handedly trounced a group of vicious Drakonian Separatists and pirates who had attacked a human colony before the main Drakonian body could even lift a claw in response to the violent attempt at rebellion. Elsewhere in the Sol System, around 78% of Mars was now under League control.

The war had raged outside the Sol System as well. Out of the 25 inhabited Outer Colonies, seven were already under total League control, as were 153 out of 775 uninhabited Outer Colonies. Three of the 16 Inner Colonies (all ICs are inhabited) were also the League's. Every inhabited human planet not yet under League control was embroiled in the conflict, the two sides fighting viciously for control over the contested worlds.

The League's advances continued, and by early August they had reached New York, and were fighting to gain control of one of the Confederacy's Terran capital-states. Here, a certain member of the League encountered an old foe, one who'd used and betrayed her, and now she had her chance for payback…

**-**_**SCENE BREAK**_**-**

**Albany, New York**

**August 6****th**** 2551**

The crowd of League soldiers threw jeers and curses at the three men on the platform, on their knees with their hands tied behind their backs. The middle one had been a high-stakes criminal who accepted a covert commission from the Confederacy to test out experimental plasma-based weaponry against the League in defending New York's capital from the "invaders". This had cost the League quite a bit of lives in taking the city, but take it they had, and now he and his two seconds-in-command were at the League's mercy. What's more, research showed that, over the years, this man's actions had pretty much ruined the lives of dozens of people, using them and then throwing them to the wolves, oftentimes leaving them in financial ruin in addition to their being used as scapegoats for his crimes. Now, Donald Tenfeld awaited judgment.

There were excited whispers amongst the League as a physically-young figure walked onto the stage, twin heavily-modified blaster pistols in hand, and clad in a black longcoat that matched her hair. The League soldiers felt varying positive emotions as the famous "Sergeant Johnson" took the stage, an ice-cold look in her eyes directed at Tenfeld.

"Now," she spoke, her voice amplified for all to hear, "after many lives, the tyrant of Albany has fallen! His army lies trampled in the dust in our wake! His crimes have been made plain for all to see! And now… there is but one step to ensure that his influence, his evil, never surfaces again! To avenge all those who have fallen before him… including myself!"

"Who…" Donald finally spoke up. "Who _are _you?-! What grudge do you have with me?-!"

"…You don't even recognize me?-! _Look at me! _Look upon my eyes, my face, my body… hear my voice…" a small device was briefly attached to her throat, projecting her voice as it would be as an adult "…as it decrees your end!"

Donald's eyes widened in recognition and terror. "…No… _You?-!_... _NO!_"

"_YES!_" Melody shouted out, her voice tainted with anger. "It's _me_, 'Donny'! You left me to _rot!_ You used me, pulled off your crime of avarice and left _me _to suffer for it, just as you have done for dozens of others! And now… for myself and for those others, and for the soldiers who fell taking this city from you, I shall have retribution! Your evil… has ruined the lives of many good souls!" She lashed out with a hard punch. "No longer!" (another blow).

"The alliance between them…" he struggled out "_will_ happen. K-Killing me will not stop it."

"I do not care about their 'alliance'!" Melody shouted, raising one of her pistols and holding the trigger down, preparing a charged shot. Donald's eyes widened more as he found himself staring at the growing, glowing ball of charged particles.

"_No! Please… no!_"

"My name… is Melody… _Marston! And I will have… __**my**__... __**REVENGE!-!-!**_"

Melody's finger released the blaster's trigger, and the charged bolt hit Donald's head at point-blank range. The top of his head, including his brain, was vaporized instantly, the half-headless body then toppling to the ground, twitching a few times and then going still. As other personnel carted off the two other prisoners for incarceration, Melody drew her combat knife and hacked down the nearby Sol Confederacy flag. Ishtar, standing nearby, handed her a League flag, which she unfurled, reared back, and with a triumphant cry jammed the tip of into the rock, the flag blowing proudly in the winds as the soldiers cheered.

"Melody Marston-Johnson…" a man announced, "and Ishtar Solos… We have all seen their accomplishments… their power… their courage… their leadership… their heroism. So long as they live… the heart of our army… _will never be broken!-!_"

The cheer rang out again, redoubled in strength, as Melody leaned against the nearby wall, an unshakable smile in her face as she basked in the warmth of her fulfilled vengeance, the fire in her soul burning brighter than ever.

**-**_**SCENE BREAK**_**-**

**Albany, New York**

**August 8****th**** 2551**

Melody walked down the suburban street, untouched by the fighting and with most of its residents long since evacuated. A few were still there, however, either from having nowhere else to go or from being League supporters who wanted to be there to help the League in any way they could once the area was under full, uncontested League control. She walked up to a little grey-and-blue house in the middle of the street, just as its occupant stepped out to look around outside. Their eyes met; the woman stared for a few seconds and then gasped in shocked recognition, while Melody tried to look stoic to hide the slight nervousness she felt.

"H-Hi, Mary" Mel finally said to the female half of the couple she'd been assigned to as a _penny_.

"Melody…" Mary Johnson said softly, shocked at seeing in person the girl she'd come to genuinely care for back when she was her "guardian". Here Melody was, wearing light armor and a black longcoat, two blaster pistols hanging from either side of her hips and a BR55 rifle slung across her back, displaying the red "P" made of fire of a League NCO on the back of her left hand and the red "I" of fire of a Special-Ops personnel on the back of her right one, shifting around slightly and looking nervous and a tad shy, just like the little girl her physical body was rather than the adult that her mind was.

"Um…" the girl finally said. "I'm… I'm sorry about…"

"It's okay" Mary said quickly; it had been shocking, but she'd always had a niggling suspicion in the back of her mind regarding the Confederacy, and she had come to support the League after much thought. "W-Why don't you come in? Have a seat and a snack, like old times? …Old times minus the court-ordered spankings, that is."

"S-Sure"

10 minutes later, the two were seated on the couch in the living room, Melody's coat draped over the back of a nearby chair and her weapons placed on said chair, eating a sandwich Mary had made for her as the two talked about various little things, their interaction dynamic some bizarre hybrid of "two old friends" and "parent and child". After a while, the front door opened, and Joshua Johnson walked into the room.

But something was wrong. His movements were oh-so-slightly erratic, his face showed an expression of feral anger, and Melody could swear that his eyes were a different color than what they were supposed to be.

"Josh?" Mary asked her husband, concern in her voice.

Then he spoke, and his voice was barely his own: "**F**o**r** t**h**e **C**o**n**f**e**d**e**r**a**c**y**…"

And then he raised a pistol, a stolen M6C, and opened fire.

Mary shrieked as Melody shoved her over the edge of the couch, pushing her out of the line of fire and then rolling to avoid the .45-caliber Semi-Armor-Piercing High-Explosive bullets coming at her.

"What the fuck are you doing, you nutjob?-!" she shouted at her old _penni_-father.

"**T**h**i**s **m**a**n** c**o**n**s**p**i**r**e**d **t**o **c**o**m**m**i**t **t**r**e**a**s**o**n** a**g**a**i**n**s**t **t**h**e** C**o**n**f**e**d**e**r**a**c**y" the words came from Joshua Johnson's mouth, "**j**u**s**t **a**s **y**o**u** a**n**d **h**i**s** w**i**f**e** a**l**r**e**a**d**y **h**a**v**e."

Melody's eyes widened as she realized what was going on. Out of the corner of her eyes, she saw Mary trying to come out, possibly to reason with her husband.

"Don't even think about getting near him, mom!" she shouted. "He's being controlled by a Confederate psyker!"

The "battle" lasted a few minutes, but soon Melody was pinned down by a foot on her stomach, her weapons on the other side of the room and the mind-controlled Joshua standing over her, holding his pistol at head-level, pointed at the ceiling but ready to bring down and execute the PIL soldier. Mary huddled in a corner.

"Now…"

A woman walked into the room, wearing a black dress uniform with the Confederate Intelligence Division insignia – the psyker.

"As traitors to the Confederacy…" she spoke, her voice low, and at the same time the words issued forth from Joshua's mouth "both of you will die."

Joshua's hand holding the pistol began to move… but not to point down.

"No…" he said in a strained voice. "Not… Mel… Not Mary…"

"_Do it, traitor_" the woman hissed, her eyes glowing.

"Y… You won't… use me for this!"

In a flash of willpower, Joshua put the M6C to his head and pulled the trigger, violently ending his own life. _Before_ the psyker could sever her controlling link.

Mary was about to scream in horror at the death of her husband, but that was stopped by the psyker woman's psychically-amplified scream of agony, leaving Melody and Mary paralyzed as the small psychic shockwave temporarily overloaded their brains' motor control. The psyker collapsed to her knees, clutching her head in unrelenting pain. After several seconds, the woman looked up, her eyes wild and feral. She stood up, hunched slightly, and began to charge a "psi-bolt" that would figuratively _and _literally fry Melody's brain…

…But then the sound of a blaster firing cut through the house, the psyker lurching forward as a half-dozen blue bolts impacted her from behind. She toppled forward and landed facedown, dead. Behind her stood a black-armored Phoenix League soldier carrying a DC-15 blaster rifle. She removed her helmet, revealing short, pale hair. Claudia Marrows-Nightray, a former Black-Circle, long since redeemed in the eyes of the League's mind-scanner psykers, and current member of the League's "Blackfire Phoenix" Shock Troopers.

"Sorry I wasn't here sooner, boss" Claudia said, walking over and helping pull Melody to her unsteady feet. The two of them walked over to Mary, who finally broke down in tears, curling up in on herself.

"They'll pay for this" Melody said with cold conviction. "We'll make sure of it."

**-**_**SCENE BREAK**_**-**

By November 23rd, the last Confederate personnel not dead or taken prisoner had evacuated and abandoned North America, leaving the League in full control of the continent. The League got to setting up two more headquarters besides their Colorado one, in D.C. and in New York City. On the 30th, the last Confederates on Mars had fled the world, leaving the formerly-red planet in the League's hands.

However, on November 30th a complication arose, when the Drakonians formally took a side in the war, throwing their support behind the Confederacy and adding some of their soldiers to the Confederates' ranks. The League still had the advantage, but now that advantage wasn't as big as it had been before.

On the day after Christmas of that year, South America was finally abandoned by the Confederacy, though scattered pirates and other outlaws made things a tad bit difficult for the League; however, the pirates were preying on both sides of the conflict, and some of them accepted letters of marquee and became privateers in the service of the League, performing hit-and-run harassment raids against the Confederacy.

The fighting continued unabated for the next several months. However, in mid-May 2552 the League got two big turns of good fortune. First was brief contact with a force of humans in another universe, one of the 'verses where the League had gotten most of their tech and weapons from. Some negotiations and explanations were made, and the Phoenix League now had another powerful warship: the Koprulu-Sector-made _Behemoth_-class battlecruiser _Striking Hammer_; John Devine was made captain of the mighty vessel, and the ship's firepower (including its devastating _Yamato_-class fusion cannon) made a lot of difference. The second bit of luck came with the Jalaxian Republic formally throwing its lot in with the Phoenix League, providing funds, support staff, technology, and even some soldiers.

The Rigellians remained neutral, having all but abandoned human space for the duration of the conflict.

The war continued inexorably forward across Earth, the Confederacy slowly but surely being pushed out of more and more territory, as casualties mounted on both sides. In early October of 2552, a new form of trouble was stirred up, when a group of 70 former hardcore criminals who had been semi-conscripted into the League (including the infamous Clyde Brothers) took a chance to defect to an enterprising pirate group. In response, the League sent out a Special-Ops strike team, composed of SpecOps and Black-Ops personnel, to take out both the pirate group and the Confederate base near the pirates' Ireland base.

**-**_**SCENE BREAK**_**-**

**D96-TCE "Albatross" Heavy Dropship (modified for stealth) **_**Vector Victor**_

**En route to enemy base, southwest Ireland**

**October 12****th****, 2552**

"When we became the Black Ops of the Phoenix League, we took an oath."

"According to our station; all without exception."

Kate Scott-Compton, usually holed up at one of the League headquarters working on various things, was doing something very rare: leading a field op. The reasons were that she was the only Class-S slicer available for this mission, and that she was kind of bored. As she spoke, the Black Ops personnel under her direct command responded with their semi-unofficial litany, joined by a few of the Spec-Ops who knew it.

"On our honor, on our lives, we swore to fight the corrupt, enslaving fascists of the Confederacy, and to never give in, to fight with everything we have!"

"Even to our dying breaths."

"Those who would break this oath and seek to bar our path are traitors, worthy of no pity, no mercy, and reprieve! Even now, they use our resources to further their own selfish ends!"

"We shall grind them into dust; scrape them as filth from our boots!"

"And continue our progression towards glorious victory!"

As Kate finished her rallying of the troops, her second-in-command, Master-Sergeant James Harland, walked over to a small, seated figure, wearing black-and-gray armor and holding her helmet in her lap, a girl who looked to have a physical body of only about 5 or 6, with shoulder-length black hair and a dull, somewhat-lifeless look in her eyes: Klara Leads. Centuries ago, her previous self been a mass-murderer, and had been sentenced to a Black-Circle period over three centuries long. The things she'd been through had broken down who she used to be, leaving a new person in its wake, but even after her very soul had totally transformed, her "handlers" continued the unending, horrible violations and punishments for hundreds of years. The end result was that she'd been utterly broken; after freeing her, the League had diagnosed her with Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, to the point where horrid flashbacks cropped up here & then without outside psychic help, and she needed a delta inducer to sleep without horrifying, vivid flashback-nightmares. The most obvious sign to others of her trauma, however, was that she was totally mute. Her mind and spirit had broken to the point of Post-Traumatic Vocal Disarticulation, leaving her psychologically incapable of any vocalization whatsoever. She hadn't said a word in over 100 years.

Unfortunately, even though the man known as Klaus Merkad was long, long, _long _gone, with the person he had become now utterly disgusted by her former self, there were a few people who refused to acknowledge it.

"The armor suits you" Harland said, before his tone darkened and his eyes fixed upon the made-of-black-fire "P" on the back of Klara's currently-ungloved left hand, encircled by a "fire-buzzsaw" pattern of black flame. "But it cannot hide that mark, _Merkad_. Nothing ever will. …You are a Repentor, a 'circle-hand'; your original depraved self supposedly long gone, your spirit broken by the Confederates, and now seeking redemption in duty. But these…" he got in her face "are _my _soldiers. Their lives matter to me; _yours _does not."

Mute as ever and shaking slightly, Klara nonetheless made a few small gestures that added up to a clear message: "That makes two of us."

Harland gave a noncommittal grunt and then stood back. It was then he noticed that Mel Johnson, sitting nearby, was glaring at him with great hostility. He was about to say something about "insubordination", but then noticed that Kate, his CO, was glaring as well. He glared right back, but backed down and returned to his seat.

Mel cast a sympathetic glance towards Klara, and then took notice of the hushed yet hostile whispered bickering nearby, and rolled her eyes. Jemmi & Jenny McLaughlin… Fraternal twins, they had been semi-legal smugglers who were simply running things from Point A to Point B, no questions asked. Unfortunately, the "no questions asked" thing got them into trouble when the Confederates caught them carrying "cargo" that turned out to be child slaves. They had promptly been forced to take the fall for their employer, seeing as they hadn't known who, exactly, their employer for that particular cargo run was. The League had rescued them from status as Black Circles, but not before the Confederates had done something irrevocable. All throughout life, Jem & Jen had cared for each other more than anyone else in the galaxy, the twins constantly looking out for each other and craving each other's company as if they were two halves of one whole. However, the Confederates' actions and manipulations had taken this close sibling bond and utterly annihilated it. Now, the two positively hated and couldn't stand each other, constantly at each other's throats (often literally), with Jenny frequently trying to find any excuse to harm her brother while Jem took every chance to try and verbally tear her a new one. The only reason they were still fielded together so often was because they were just that damn good when (forced to be) working in tandem with each other (and with at least one other person who was certified physically & mentally capable of preventing them from killing each other).

Right now the verbal vitriol, low-volume as it may be, was getting particularly bad. Fearing a possible scuffle, Melody picked up an empty rifle magazine and chucked it, the thrown part smacking into the seat between the twins' heads, startling them both. As one, they turned to see Melody glaring at them.

"Knock that shit off" was all that Mel said, but her tone and the look in her eyes made both twins swallow nervously, scooting farther away from each other and forcing their attentions elsewhere.

The stealth-modified Albatross dropped in altitude as it neared the drop-off point. Less than a minute later, it touched down and the doors opened, disgorging a Black-Ops team and two SpecOps squads, the total force numbering at 28. The Albatross closed itself off and made itself scarce, as the strike force advanced across the moonlit fields, soon reaching the rear entrance, the Spec-Ops assassinating a pair of sleeping guards while Kate remote-hacked a camera/turret system before it could register their presence. Everyone checked their gear, ensuring that their armor's energy shields were functioning properly, and that their weapons were ready. Melody readied an MA5C assault rifle and ensured that her twin blaster pistols were ready, Klara checked her M7S silenced & scoped SMG, Kate readied her COG-made "Longshot" bolt-action sniper rifle, modified with an IR & night-vision scope and with double-sized magazines (10 rounds opposed to 5), along with her M6C/SOCOM pistol, and everyone else carried various weapons of war.

Kate's personal TACPAD came out, and the door was quickly hacked, sliding open. A pirate guard a few meters in got a bullet between the eyes from Kate's pistol before he could even gasp in surprise, and the team funneled in. Klara, M7S in hand, took point alongside Dani Wilson, who hefted an M90A 8-gauge shotgun in her hands and a COG-made "Lancer" assault rifle slung across her back. As they neared the door to the branch-off point, a rejuved figure came out – one of the traitors, judging by the unique armor he wore and the "oh crap" expression he had as he saw the small horde of League forces heading at him. The man-turned-(physically) boy took a thrown knife between the eyes, courtesy of MSgt. Harland, and crumpled in a heap. The group continued into the semicircular room, Harland pulling his weapon from the corpse's head.

The group filed into a room that had four paths leading out (besides the one they came in through). The strike force soon separated itself into four teams of seven. Alpha Team, led by 2LT Scott-Compton and also including Sgt. Wilson, would find the enemy communications center and gain control of it. Bravo Team, led by MSgt. Harland and also including PFC Leads, would take the armory and then the barracks. Charlie Team, led by Sgt. Marston-Johnson and including the Arlan Lightsworn, sole Jalaxian in this op, would take their air control tower and their landing pad. Delta Team, led by Chief Warrant Officer Grade 3 Ishtar Solos, would take their vehicle depot.

Ishtar was clad in her new custom-built armor, mostly blue and dark-blue plating with some silver-gray thrown in here & there, with a helmet that exposed her face and let her long hair hang out behind in a low ponytail (she still had an HUD holo-projected in front of her eyes, and an energy shield ensured protection; also, she had another, different suit more like the standard for hazardous environment ops and the hypothetical space op). She was well-armed; her now-ever-present signature weapons were a pair of twin swords composed of an unidentifiable and nigh-indestructible metal, currently slung across her back; her shield, half as large as her body and made of the same metal; and her personal blaster cannon, which fired either explosive blaster-bolt "shells" capable of taking down a light-armored tank if they hit the right spot(s), or an "acid-rust" shell/blast specifically designed to deal devastating damage to mechanical targets such as battle droids.

Ishtar was a dour sort, though her kind heart was still very much present. At the start of the war, due to what she'd been through while in the Confederacy's clutches, she'd wished for death, but her cultural upbringing saw suicide as a gravely dishonorable act (unless it was giving one's life for the sake of others or to prevent oneself from being controlled and/or tortured by another). Thus, she had to die in battle, and honor dictated that she had to go down fighting all-out for it to truly count. The "problem" was that, due to training & experience and natural skill & grace, Ishtar was an incredibly skilled combatant; in all the dangerous fights she'd thrown herself into, she'd yet to even come close to being killed. And as the "code" dictated that she couldn't bring unwilling others amongst her allies down with her, she had to temper her self-destructive actions whenever leading a team. What's more, she had (though she hadn't noticed) become an extremely competent squad leader and field commander, leading teams with extraordinary efficiency and success rate, and minimal casualty rates.

Recently, some of her subordinates, equals, and superiors, along with her personal experiences throughout the war so far, had all convinced her to all but completely drop her "I must die" attitude, and had gotten her focused on the leading and protecting of others, something she proved to be so good at that she had recently earned a new alias amongst the others in the League who knew her: Sentinel.

The four teams headed down their respective pathways. Wilson took point in Alpha Team, shotgun in hand, with Kate in the center with her M6C/SOCOM. Alpha advanced through a few hallways, killing a few guards, and soon reached the comm. center… which was guarded by something that caught the group by surprise. Apparently, one of the "Republic" gunships manufactured by the Antarctica mega-forge was actually a damaged & abandoned original from that timeline/dimension, and a personal datapad left behind by a now-long-deceased soldier had a bit of data on what said 'Republic' had been fighting. The end result? Courtesy of a bit of data from the defectors, there was a pair of Destroyer Droids guarding the communications gear, painted in the pirates' colors. As the two Pirate Droidekas raised their shields and opened fire, Alpha Team scrambled for cover.

"What the hell are those?-!" Cpl. Taylor shouted as a blaster bolt whizzed over the desk he'd taken cover behind.

"Shielded war-droids with four blasters each, obviously" Dani said with a bit of snark.

"Thank you, Sergeant Obvious; now, how do we kill them?-!"

"We don't have anything powerful enough to one-shot their shields, so we'll have to chip them down."

On Kate's hand-signal, a half-dozen M9 HE-DP frag grenades flew out, landing on the ground in-between the destroyer droids. The several up-close detonations severely weakened the droids' shields, and Kate popped out and hit the one on her left with a close-range (for a sniping weapon) Longshot shot, draining the droid's shield and leaving it open to another shot to its CPU; the machine went still, disabled for good. The other Droideka lost its weakened shields to a barrage of gunfire from the others of the squad, and a shotgun blast to the power core from Dani caused the droid to explode violently, though neither the communications gear nor any of the team members were hurt by the blast.

The way clear, the team moved across the room, stepping around the dead left droid and the fragmented right one, and Kate walked up to the communications console. A little work, and the task was done.

"All teams, this is Second Lieutenant Scott-Compton" Kate said over the force-wide comm. "Enemy communications are jammed. They can't call for help; be as loud as you need to be."

Then Kate's TACPAD started beeping. She looked at it, and her eyes widened. "Uh-oh."

She booted up the comm. again. "All teams, we have a complication. The Confederacy have launched their own assault on this place. We're about to have a three-way fight on our hands."

By this point, Bravo Team had secured the armory and moved on to the barracks. As Jem & Jen, both wielding M392 Designated Marksman Rifles, gunned down a quartet of pirate soldiers, while Klara's M7S submachine gun ventilated another two pirates (one of which was one of the traitors), MSgt. Harland was blindsided by a shotgun blast that took down his weakened shields and tore through his armor, stunning him and leaving him open to another blast that shredded his lower torso. His new wound pouring blood, Harland made a grim slasher's smile as he turned to Mick Clyde, the man-turned-boy who'd fired the shots and who now had an empty shotgun and a look of shock that Harland was still standing. With a final burst of strength and speed, Harland triggered the five grenades clipped to his belt, smacking them all at once to set off their contact fuses (AN: or whatever the proper terminology is for a grenade that, once the pin/button is pulled/pushed, won't start its detonation timer until after it hits something, like the ground, after being thrown), and charged Mick Clyde, ignoring the bits of his own organs falling out onto the floor as he wrapped the traitor in a bear hug. The grenades went off, killing both boys instantly in a shower of blood and gore.

The twins, having witnessed this, both looked to Klara. After a few seconds, the mute girl got a look of surprise on her face and pointed to herself, asking confirmation. Jem locked eyes with her and nodded in response, and the twins both ran over to her side, each placing a hand on one of her shoulders. The remaining six of Bravo Team thus formed into two groups of three, each trio tackling a different sector of the area.

Meanwhile, Charlie Team had cleared out the enemy air-control tower and were now on the outside landing pad. Unfortunately, the Confederacy had arrived, and Charlie Team was hunkered down, weathering a light 'storm' of Confederate forces. Finally, the automated AA gun came to life, the reprogrammed weapon blasting Confederate aircraft out of the sky. However, just as the last dropship was shot down, out from it and onto the platform leapt a Drakonian soldier. Defying both the Confederacy's usual nonlethal policies (which were waning as the war went on) and the stereotype of Drakonians being physically weak for their size due to their evolutionary heritage, this one was clad in a modernized and energy-shielded variant of traditional Drakonian war armor, and wielded a large and wicked-looking battle axe. He charged, and the weapon was revealed to be more than it appeared when it effortlessly cleaved through a hunk of armor plating dislodged from a now-wrecked transport flyer.

The team scattered, trying to get clear of the new threat; a pirate flight technician who'd sided with the League forces in fending off the Confederates fell, his torso cleaved in two from top left to bottom right. Private Jacobs lost his footing and fell, now 'seated' against a large piece of debris. The Drakonian swung his axe, and the strike drained Jacobs' shields and then cut into and through his chest armor; he cried out in pain as the blade cut into his chest, a cry that turned into a gasp for air as his left lung was punctured by the strike. The Drakonian withdrew the axe and snarled, and then raised the weapon high for an overhead strike to slice Jacobs in half down the middle. Suddenly, the strike was sent off-course, burying the axe-head into the tarmac as Melody leapt onto the Drakonian's back, throwing him off-balance. Before he could throw her off, her knife came out and was then stabbed deep into the alien's neck. The Drakonian thrashed about, trying to throw her off to no avail, and then Arlan charged in, hitting the Drakonian hard and knocking it onto its back, where it lay still. After several seconds:

"Get. This thing. Off. Of me."

The team rolled the body off of Melody, who stood up, withdrew her knife, shook the blood off it ("Eww" PFC Laren said after a couple drops landed on his armor), and sheathed the weapon. Arlan then pulled the wounded Private Jacobs to his feet, draping the boy's arm over his shoulders and helping him walk. Some biofoam was applied, and Jacobs was good to go for a few hours; said few hours proved more than enough as, less than a minute later, a League Pelican flew in and touched down, a squad hopping out to secure the area. The medic ran over to Jacobs, ran a diagnostic scan, and promptly escorted the wounded soldier into the dropship. The ship then lifted off, making haste for the _Striking Hammer_, the hammerhead vessel now visible hovering 250 meters in the air a few kilometers distant.

Nearby, the elevator leading to the vehicle depot arrived and opened; Ishtar walked out, along with the rest of Delta Team; two floors below them, the pirates' war vehicles lay twisted and broken, as did their defenders. Alpha and Bravo Teams soon made their way as well, and a pair of dropships could be seen coming in, soon setting down on the pad and allowing the four teams to board them. As the two lifted off and headed out, the occupants could see the _Striking Hammer _flying in closer, with at least a half-dozen dropships heading for the base's landing pad.

**-**_**SCENE BREAK**_**-**

**Two days later**

Klara Leads was tired of running.

She and two other operatives had been dropped behind enemy lines as a "Headhunter" team, to take out a trio of high-ranking Confederate intelligence officials. They'd succeeded, but then things had gone pear-shaped. The first operative had been caught by an EMP grenade, disabling his active camouflage and his energy shields, leaving him easy pickings for a Confederate tank. They'd blasted him with a delta inducer, meaning to force him into sleep so as to capture him, but before he lost consciousness he'd triggered a failsafe neural implant that proceeded to destroy the areas of his brain necessary for vital functions, leaving him dead in less than a minute. The second member of the team had revealed himself to be of the same type of person as the departed Master-Sergeant Harland, and had tried to throw Klara to the wolves to save his own skin… only to take a grenade to the face from the Confeds while Klara got away unharmed.

Now, however, Klara was exhausted and wounded, her armor's active camouflage system long since damaged beyond repair, her energy shield generator offline, her entire body aching, and now she was stuck with her back to the edge of a cliff, and her legs had failed to respond to her, so she was unable to throw herself over the ledge. The squad of Confederate soldiers slowly, cautiously closed in on her, lethal weapons drawn and pointed at her.

After so many, many years, Klara felt at peace: she was about to die. No more nightmares. No more icy looks. No more flashbacks and constant feeling of foreboding terror. She would have said something poignant, but the psychological trauma she suffered from had long since robbed her of speech, so she merely kneeled, eyes closed and head held high, waiting for the end. The Confederate soldiers seemed happy to oblige.

But the sound heard next was not the characteristic sound of Confederate "laser-bolt" weapons firing. Instead, it was a whirring rumble from behind and below Klara, growing ever louder. Klara and the soldiers menacing her looked up in shock as a Pelican dropship rose up from behind Klara, with Kelvin "Father Hawk" Compton at the helm. There was a whirring sound as the chin-mounted minigun spun up, and then it let loose, a storm of bullets ripping through the Confederate soldiers and tearing them apart. A Confederate tank approaching got a barrage of ANVIL-II ASMs for its trouble. The dropship swiveled around, bringing its open troop bay to beat next to the completely stunned and confused Klara. Several League soldiers popped out, opening fire on advancing Confederates and gunning them down.

Kate Scott-Compton hopped out and walked over to Klara, kneeling down and grabbing hold of her hand. The shocked little girl, unshed tears in her eyes, was silent as ever, but her expression asked: Why?

Kate smiled. "Because you're one of us. Really, that alone is reason enough. C'mon, kid; let's get out of here."

She pulled the still-bewildered girl to her feet, leading her into the dropship's troop bay. The soldiers piled back in, firing a few parting shots as the Pelican soared off into the distance.

**-**_**SCENE BREAK**_**-**

**That night**

**Compton residence**

**Albany, NY**

"Mom? Dad?"

Kelvin and Jane Compton turned to their physically-young adopted daughter.

"I wanted to know if we could take someone in for a while."

"…Who is this 'someone'?" Kelvin asked.

"She's a sorta-new friend of mine. She's been through a lot of bad stuff in her life. She got hit with a really, really harsh sentence a couple centuries back, but the person she used to be who did the things she got sentenced for is long, long gone. But even after she became a new person, they kept torturing her, and now she's pretty messed up psychologically – she's got something called Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, and she's also been so traumatized that she can't speak. She's really nervous and scared pretty much all the time, and she has a lot of trouble trusting people. I'm thinking that since you two were able to break through my shell and show me what parents' love and trust is _supposed _to be like, maybe we could all get her to relearn how to trust people and not be so scared and lonely all the time, show her that happiness _isn't _beyond her reach, and give her the kind of love and stuff that she badly needs. What do you say?"

The couple considered, withdrawing to whisper amongst themselves, but a consensus was reached very quickly.

"Of course we can, chick" Jane said, and her husband nodded.

Kate smiled and walked over to the door to another room, opening it a crack and sticking her head in.

"Klara? Come on, Klara; you can come out now."

After several seconds, a small girl shuffled out. Short, black hair, grey eyes, and was rather thin other than the hint of lean muscle that came with standard League training. She looked at the Comptons, and there was uncertainty and fear in her eyes, she was shivering in fear and nervousness, and her hands were held protectively over her chest. Kate led the smaller girl slowly over to her parents. Jane approached slowly so as to not startle the poor thing, kneeling down to Klara's level and with a warm smile on her face.

"Hi there, sweetie" Jane said in her perfect 'mother of small children' tone. "Welcome home."

Klara's eyes widened, and slowly, ever so slowly, she shuffled forward, toward Jane. When she was close, Jane slowly, gingerly raised a hand and softly cupped Klara's cheek. Klara flinched a little at contact, but didn't withdraw, letting the warm, soft hand touch her face. The other hand came up to softly rub the top of her head and then run through her hair, and then Jane took a calculated risk and slowly moved forward, pulling Klara into a hug. The girl stiffened for several seconds, but then found herself slowly but surely relaxing into the embrace, as Jane's arms wrapped around her protectively and held her close. She didn't flinch when Kelvin walked over and placed a hand on the top of her head, or when Kate came up and hugged her from behind.

After several seconds, the dam broke. Klara buried her face in Jane's chest and started to cry, her little arms coming up and holding on tight as she experienced a feeling of care and safety and _rightness _that broke through her defenses completely. Due to her condition, her sobs and cries were silent, but the sounds of her gasps of breath and the way her body was wracked with the silent sobs revealed that had she been able to vocalize she'd be loudly crying her heart out at this point. Jane held her close throughout it all, whispering soft words in her ear and stroking her hair and back.

She was home.

**-**_**CHAPTER END**_**-**

Next chapter, we enter the next year of the war, when the Confederacy really starts to fall apart.


	5. Home Stretch

Insert semi-witty comment here

SEE CHAPTER 1 FOR DISCLAIMERS

**-**_**CHAPTER START**_**-**

By mid-November 2552, the League had gained control of all of Asia. Outside the Sol System, 18 of the 25 Inner Colonies, 23 of the 25 inhabited Outer Colonies, and 750 of the 800 uninhabited Outer Colonies were in League control. The Confederacy was losing ground, and fast. Thus, they were becoming increasingly desperate, their soldiers becoming more determined to hold ground and less restrained by the culture of nonlethal warfare they'd been brought up in. The Confederacy also cracked down more on controlling their people, and were putting less effort to hide or disguise some of their actions as their desperation grew and casualties mounted on both sides. Even the Drakonians were starting to take notice of their allies' shifty and at times questionable actions.

The Confederacy's corrupt higher-ups were steadily increasing their already-tight grip. But one day, they squeezed too hard…

**-**_**SCENE BREAK**_**-**

**Oakland, California**

**March 28****th****, 2553**

Tabitha Earnhardt took in the sights, looking out at the ocean from the beachfront home she currently lived in. This old city was one of the Phoenix League's most populous all-civilian locations on the US West Coast, with over half a million people calling the city of Oakland home at the moment. It was also a bit more active than usual, and for good reason: a group of a little under a thousand Confederate military personnel had chosen to defect to the Phoenix League, the leaders of which were currently meeting with League delegates in city hall while the soldiers were currently being sequestered in nearby San Francisco.

Tabitha closed her eyes and leaned back, thinking of the few friends she'd made back when she was a Confederate "BC", before her _penni_-parents (currently inside the house that she sat upon the porch of) threw their support in with the League, though Tabitha and her "parents" chose not to join the League's armed forces. She reminisced about Claudia, who was apparently a fairly skilled member of the League's frontline forces; about Nina, who was a dropship pilot; and about the human-appearing alien girl Eve. Unlike the others, Eve had simply… vanished. Word was it that the little Lucavi had somehow managed to escape offworld and return to her homeworld; seeing that the Lucavi were somewhat isolationist and very good at avoiding detection (their stealth prowlers were amongst the most difficult-to-detect starships in the known galaxy, capable of, when "running dark", getting within 1,000 meters of a Confederate ship without being detected; combine that with their isolationist stance, and the Confederacy had yet to formally recognize their existence, with word of them only spreading from the few traders and smugglers who'd encountered them), than if the rumors were true it would likely be quite some time before Eve was ever seen by human eyes again, if at all.

Tabitha opened her eyes, and saw something strange in the distance, flying high in the sky way out over the ocean, but slowly coming closer. It soon got close enough to be discerned as _several _"somethings", all flying towards Oakland from the southwest. She barely noticed as her former "owners" and current adoptive parents came out to join her, catching sight of their little charge staring out into the sky and following her gaze, quickly catching sight. As the things continued to get closer, it was revealed that there were at least two dozen of them. When they were mere seconds away, the observers recognized them as aircraft. Confederate aircraft. Confederate _military _aircraft.

The front of the group of large aircraft soared high overhead with a faint roar of engines, and when the planes toward the rear of the formation were almost directly over the beachfront areas, each and every one of the 26 Confederate flyers began dropping several objects, which free-fell toward the ground. The first of the explosions reached the Earnhardt family's ears, and confusion & panic began to set in. They didn't see one particular bomb coming down right at them.

Tabitha and her family were dead before they could even scream.

All across the proud old city, carnage began as the powerful bombs blanketed the area, killing thousands with the first salvo alone. People began running and screaming, gripped by terror as the explosives rained down around and upon them, demolishing every structure they hit and leaving dead in their wake. The 26 bombers began flying here & there over the city, dropping their bombs as they went. Many vehicles began crossing the famous San Francisco Oakland Bay Bridge, trying to flee the massacre. In response, several bombers shifted focus, pounding the old bridge and the people on it with dropped explosives. Soon, the 617-year-old bridge was falling into the water in scattered pieces, a horrific screeching, groaning sound accompanying the tortured metal giving way as the bridge supports collapsed. All across the city, the explosions continued to devastate everything and everyone in their radius.

10 minutes in, the Confederate bombers, their work done, turned around and began flying back out to sea, heading for the Confederate base at Hawaii. A squadron of League 'Skyhawk' fighters had arrived now, and their retaliatory strike shot down seven of the retreating bombers before they were called back to fly defensive formation over what was left of the city.

**-**_**SCENE BREAK**_**-**

The "Oakland Atrocity", as it is now known, killed over 400,000 people. Except for 36 ex-Confederate military personnel, all of those killed were civilians. It was the first time in the conflict that either side had ever deliberately targeted and hit a location that was composed wholly of civilians, with no actual military presence whatsoever. To keep public relations up, the Confederacy had their 10 best slicers work diligently to cover up all records of the incident and to keep information on it from spreading.

Said 10 best slicers were no match for Kate Compton.

In little time, Kate had not only foiled the Confederate slicers' attempts to suppress the Oakland Atrocity from being known, she had counter-hacked into the Confederates' database and pulled out massive amounts of data that she would end up spending quite some time sifting through later, but most important – and immediately unencrypted and made sense of – were detailed orders authorizing and ordering the massacre, showing that the Confederacy had knowingly and willingly slaughtered hundreds of thousands of innocents to kill a very small number of defectors.

And then, only 26 hours after the disaster, she released this data to the general public.

The result was predictable and humongous. Public outrage echoed across the planet, amongst League personnel, amongst civilians, and amongst many Confederate military personnel who had been kept in the dark about the Confederacy's true nature and had believed they were serving a morally-upright government this whole time. Confederate President Akta M'Butu was positively incensed, demanding to know who exactly was responsible for the atrocity and all but demanding their heads on a pike.

Perhaps the biggest response was from a certain group of non-humans. The Drakonians, already slightly suspicious of their human allies' recent actions, were disgusted and angered by this massacre. Their government formally withdrew support from the Sol Confederacy, stepping out of the war and stating their decision to assist the League once the war eventually came to its end. Some of their soldiers slipped past and semi-legally signed up to assist the League directly in the fighting; however, there were a few rebels who chose to remain with the Confederacy.

In response, the Confederacy began to subtly clamp down on the potential for deserters, resorting to various means, from propaganda to veiled threats, to keep their remaining soldiers on their side. However, the League still began taking what chances they could get to weaken Confederate soldiers' resolve in their allegiance…

**-**_**SCENE BREAK**_**-**

**Island off the coast of Italy**

**June 3****rd****, 2553**

Melody's twin blasters fired again, blasting another pair of pirates. She advanced, clad in her new personal armor, a mixture of reds, blues, and silvers with her longcoat worn over it, a powerful energy shield protecting her (and her coat). Her helmet left her face exposed (but shielded, of course) with an HUD holo-projected over her eyes, and a retractable face mask, meant to cover her nose & mouth, was currently retracted. Behind her, the rest of the strike team – the twins, Claudia, Miles & Harry, Ishtar, and the famous Leonid Dragovich - advanced with her, blasting any hostile in sight; behind said team, the main force of League soldiers moved forward, taking out the (comparatively) small fry that the strike-team left in their wake while carving through the heavier-armed pirates and enemy field leaders. A plasma shell from behind Melody hit a pirate field-leader in the face, pretty much vaporizing his head. She glanced back, seeing the imposing armored figure of Dragovich bringing up the rear, arm cannon at the ready.

Dragovich had quite the résumé and reputation. He was an orphan who had grown up alone, deliberately slipping through the cracks so as to raise himself without the "interference" of government-assigned caretakers. The puberty-delaying Fujikawa Treatment had not affected him, so he'd gotten an early edge in life physical-wise. He'd always been very mature even as a young boy, his ironclad will helping to easily suppress the effects of teen hormones. He'd been one of the very few Confederate military commanders who had avoided the centuries-running conspiracy of corruption. He'd also been pretty much the _only_ one to still espouse the virtues of lethal warfare, and he had used such to extraordinary effect against many of the Confederacy's enemies, such as pirate groups and that one group of vicious Drakonian rebels. After undergoing a voluntary rejuvenation upon reaching up in age, he had again deliberately utilized his connections and skill to 'slip through the cracks', raising himself in his solitary home/base. Due to him possessing a unique and inexplicable immunity to all forms of radiation-caused harm, said home was in Pripyat, Ukraine, where he enjoyed the solitude and quietness. Of course, when the League's ambassadors came to him, explained things, and asked him to join up, he agreed rather readily.

In both his "first" life and his current one, Leonid had earned himself a nickname to match his reputation, taken from an old Terran multimedia fiction series. Like his nicknamesake, he was cold, stoic, quick, very powerful, and ruthless in battle, working with quick, cold efficiency at all times. He soon decided to oblige the alias that those who respected and feared him granted to him by crafting a personal set of powered armor, composed of black and dark-purple armor plating (yes, with shields), a pair of small 'fins' on either side of his helmet, and a blood-red HUD visor that covered his eyes along with a faceplate to protect the rest of his face; the armor was also designed to be connected to his personal weapon: the AM-X3 Plasmacaster, a large and devastatingly powerful arm cannon worn on/over his right arm, which fired powerful blasts/shells of superheated plasma (at around one shot every three seconds for full-power shots, one every second for lower-strength), meant to take down armored infantry and light vehicles.

Thus, in this universe just as in that which his nicknamesake "lived", people knew and feared the name of Shockwave.

The team moved forward, and soon they had their goal in sight: a Confederate temporary HQ, surrounded by pirates & their war-droids who were just barely being kept at bay by the outnumbered defenders. Earlier that day, when League HQ had gotten the distress call, Chairwoman Howard had done something very unusual: ordered a force to rescue the trapped Confederates. There'd been a little protestation, especially considering recent happenings, but Grace had been adamant upon learning of the base's commander: Lieutenant-Colonel Robert Veers, a gruff old Confederate military officer who nonetheless was not party to the Confederacy's corruption. And so the League forces found themselves fighting across some rock off the coast of "The Big Boot", aiming to rescue and assist a group who were technically their sworn enemies.

Claudia's blaster rifle spat blue death, gunning down a trio of Confederate war-droids, while Jem & Jen used their assault rifles – a COG Lancer and a UNSC MA37, respectively – to take out a half-dozen pirate troopers armed with various weapons. A shot from Miles' shotgun blew off the weapon-holding arm of a SSM-toting pirate, and a lucky shot to the unfired warhead from Melody's blaster pistol caused an explosion that consumed the pirate's head. Harry's grenade launcher fired twice, the 40mm explosive grenades taking out a group of war-droids and the pirate commanding them. Ishtar's metal shield effortlessly stopped bullets fired by a pirate machinegun auto-turret, and a single blast from her cannon slagged the turret.

They soon reached the base, carving through the pirate forces between them and it; the Confederate soldiers there were _very _surprised to see League forces firing at the pirates and _not _firing at _them_. Crushed between two forces, the pirates were quickly wiped out, the few survivors retreating. A hovering droid flew out, hovering in front of the League forces. It holo-projected an image of a man, clad in a Confederate officer's uniform, with short black hair (with a few hints of grey) and piercing grey eyes, and a dour yet curious look on his face. Another droid hovered up from behind the League, projecting an image of Chairwoman Grace Staunton-Howard and Vice-Chairman John Devine.

"Well, you're about the last people I expected to show up" LCOL Veers said. "What's your angle here, 'Chairwoman'?"

"Our angle?-!" Melody snapped. "I'll give you an 'angle', you slimy Confederate piece of shit!"

"Mel! Enough!" Grace shouted to her subordinate and friend. "_I'll _handle this." The hologram of Grace turned to face that of the Confederate. "The Confederacy is falling apart, Veers. Its territory is falling to us at an increasing rate, millions of locations across the Earth are in utter chaos, civilians are being butchered, corruption is rampaging unchecked throughout the Confederacy's upper echelons, and these pirates are acting up more as well. The Confederacy has shown that they place no value on human life, despite their claims. …What would have happened to you and your men here today if we _hadn't _shown up?"

"…Your point?"

"I'm giving you a choice: you can return to the Confederacy and lose the war _and _your decency as a human being, or you can join us and save our entire race from descending into a full-on tyrannical dictatorship, being consumed by bloodshed, or maybe even destroying our own planet. I don't think it's a difficult decision."

"Join forces with you?-! After all my boys and yours have done in this here war? I admit that I'm rather peeved over recent Confederate policies, but I don't see how becoming just another of your rank-and-file is gonna change that."

"You wouldn't be 'just another rank-and-file'. I am letting you keep your prestige, your influence, and your soldiers should they choose to join us with you, as well as a position on my military council! You can help us stop this damned war and get humanity back on the right track!"

Veers was silent for several seconds, eyes closed in thought, and he then let out a long, weary sigh.

"All right, Staunton. …You've got a deal."

Grace's hologram smiled. "You've made the right choice, _Colonel _Veers. Our dropships will be there shortly to get you and your surviving men to one of our outlying bases to patch you all up, and I'll be there personally to hammer out the details with you."

"I can't believe we're gonna trust this fucking snake…" Melody muttered.

"Don't worry, Mel" Devine's hologram said. "He's _our _snake now."

**-**_**SCENE BREAK**_**-**

Contrary to Ms. Marston-Johnson's suspicions, Veers proved to be loyal to the cause, especially after the League showed him what they had on the Confederacy's centuries of wrongdoing. His tactical & strategic skill soon proved quite valuable to the League, and his hand-picked soldiers fit in rather quickly. After he proved his loyalty a few times, Melody gradually began to start to warm up to him.

On June 15th, Confederate President Akta M'Butu, the altruist who had been deliberately and carefully kept in the dark regarding the corruption in "her" government and how she had no real power, received an encrypted data-pack for her eyes only, signed "Hawk Chick". Attached was a low-grade AI that would ensure that only she would see the contents, keeping the file shut unless she was alone and unmonitored, and covertly disabling all monitoring devices when she was finally in a position to read it. Within a few hours, she had the opportunity. She opened the file.

An hour later, she closed the file and leaned back in her chair, pale and wide-eyed and horrified.

Over 300 years. There was hopeless corruption on every rung of the ladder in the Confederacy, and it had been so for over 300 years. Tyrannical grip on the Colonies. Assassinations. Cover-ups. The full sanctioning of the Oakland Atrocity, along with planned future strikes on "disobedient" cities. Akta was faced with the revelation that she had little, if any, real power or control in her position; she was, in actuality, a mere figurehead, as a corrupt senate and council ran things for their own ends while carefully feeding her misinformation, lies, and expertly-falsified evidence to make her believe she had any power… just as they had done for all Presidents of the Confederacy before her for centuries.

But worse was the uncounted billions of unjust convictions and making of '_pennies_'. Across human space, in the start-of-war population alone, there were 1,759,376,230 _penitatas_ whose sentences were grossly disproportionate to their crimes, due to being used as "fall guys" for Confederate actions, and 959,678,502 pennies who were completely innocent, framed due to speaking out – in entirely legal manner, mind you – against the Confederacy's corruption, for learning too much, for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, or even for just being considered potentialthreats to the corrupt officials' power; lastly, of 680,000,000 genuine 'pennies', 500,470,300 of them had committed 'crimes' (sabotage, slicing, protests/rallies, trying to protect innocents whom the Confederacy saw as potential threats to be eliminated, etc.) directly meant to undermine the Confederacy's immoral, oppressive acts that M'Butu was against. And this didn't cover those whose unfair sentences had long since been carried out in the centuries passed.

So many lives ruined, all to protect the corrupt, greedy conspirators' interests and personal power.

Enough was enough.

The next day, President Akta M'Butu made a formal proclamation, broadcasted across all of human space, where she acknowledged that she and the many presidents before her had been lied to and led astray by the many, many corrupt individuals that were supposed to be under her in the chain of command. She publicly condemned the actions made by said individuals over the years, and then officially pardoned 3,219,525,032 members of the Phoenix League of their past charges (many posthumously due to their deaths in the war).

That night, a troop of Confederate war-droids blasted their way into her spacious house, slaughtering everyone in their path. Thankfully, a League strike-team arrived in time to rescue her, saving her from the high-profile assassination attempt that had been sent out by the corrupt Confederate senate. She was escorted back to League Headquarters for her safety. The next day, the Confederate Senate made a public announcement proclaiming their coup against President M'Butu, and taking control of the Confederacy from here out. Possibilities of desertions were discouraged by the Senate and various military leaders explicitly threatening the families of all soldiers and personnel still "serving" in the Confederate armed forces. The Sol Confederacy had cast off its centuries-old cloak of benevolence and fairness, and finally publicly revealed itself as the tyrannical dictatorship it really was.

Akta M'Butu was quickly placed on the League's high council as civilian leader, essentially the co-commander-in-chief of the entire Phoenix League alongside military leader Grace Staunton-Howard, where her skills could be put into place to genuinely help people.

**-**_**SCENE BREAK**_**-**

**Phoenix League Europe HQ**

**Paris, France**

**August 5****th****, 2553**

Melody Marston-Johnson sat in a padded chair, admiring the Staff-Sergeant insignia she'd been granted upon her promotion five days earlier. She looked across at her "faithful sidekick", the newly-made-Sergeant John Shepherd. "Shep" was a solid Spec-Ops soldier, and in the 18 months they'd been operating together he & Melody had come to know & understand each other pretty well. They were almost like siblings, really (but only that; both of them had their romantic sights set on other people). He apparently had a bit of a need to prove himself; apparently, he was rather ashamed of his ancestor Zachary Shepherd's actions back at the turn of the 21st century – deliberately antagonizing an infamous Russian terrorist and starting World War 3 just to bolster patriotism. Zachary Shepherd had promptly gotten himself killed by the now-famous hero John MacTavish, the man who, with the help of the resourceful John Price, had proceeded to uncover and publicly unveil the "hero's" plot to the shocked world, leading to a chain of events that brought the war to a grinding halt… though not until nearly 10% of the global population was dead.

John Shepherd saw his ancestor's actions as having made a huge black mark on the Shepherd family name, and sought to atone for the man's unforgivable acts by "bringing honor back to the Shepherd name, in service to the League". Never mind that everyone else had long since already acknowledged that John's actions were unnecessary, as they did not hold him responsible for the actions caused by a man 500 years in the past.

Nearby, a door opened, and out came a half-dozen figures, including Colonel Veers. The woman at the front, however, was who drew Melody's eyes. She hopped down off the chair and walked over, extending a hand to the woman, who took it.

"Welcome to the League, Ms. Garrett."

The marine-turned-teacher-turned-marine smiled. "I just couldn't sit by and watch anymore" she said. "Especially now when I saw how much you've been doing, Melody."

Lisa Garrett closed her eyes, and suppressed a shudder as the memory of the time they almost lost Melody a few months before the girl underwent her dramatic change of character – the hacked Spank-Master, the blood-stained implements, the unconscious and not-breathing little girl whose lower rear body was unspeakably mutilated – flashed through her mind for a brief moment. She opened her eyes again, looking down at Melody's eyes – the eyes of an adult – and her gaze traced the thin scar still visible on Melody's right cheek, one of her 'souvenirs' from the now-dead Clyde Brothers. She knelt down, the shiny new insignia of a Second Lieutenant being placed upon her uniform by Melody, and then stood back up. Melody smiled and saluted her.

"At ease, Staff-Sergeant" she said, her 'marine' tone coming to the surface easily even after so long. Melody lowered her arm and stood straight, her longcoat flapping lightly in the breeze from a mounted fan nearby. "Melody Johnson… Oops, since you've gotten your birth name back, I guess it's Melody _Marston_-Johnson now."

"…Marston?"

Colonel Veers' query interrupted. He was staring intently at Melody, a tiny spark of recognition in his eyes. "Any relation to Michael J. Marston?"

Melody's eyes widened slightly. "You… knew my father?"

At this, Veers' face lit up. "Knew him?" he said with a jovial tone. "Hah! Girl, I served alongside that man for nearly two decades! Best field officer I ever knew! Had a good head on his shoulders and one hell of an arm, too. Always led from the front, like me. Damn shame what happened to 'im. And you're his daughter?"

"I'm… Michael and Carol Marston's daughter, yes."

Veers gave a boisterous laugh. "Well, no wonder you're so badass! It must be hereditary. Well, I know old Mike would never let me live it down if I didn't keep an eye out for his little gal, so consider me a friend. Now don't worry; I won't coddle ya or try to keep you out of dangerous stuff – heaven knows neither you nor Mike would forgive me for that – but I'll be here for ya if you ever need a favor or somethin' along those lines."

Melody pondered for several seconds, and then nodded. One more friend in high places couldn't hurt.

"So… Could you tell me a little more about my dad?"

**-**_**SCENE BREAK**_**-**

On October 17th, the last Confederate forces in Europe withdrew from said continent, leaving it in League hands. All remaining Confederate forces fell back to the only continent still solidly in their control: Africa. The final stage of the war had begun.


	6. Out With The Old, In With the New

The empire falls.

I started this whole thing with a skeletal outline to the story beforehand. This outline did not have close-in details. I think that lackluster choice is starting to show, and you'll soon think so, too.

SEE CHAPTER 1 FOR DISCLAIMERS

**-**_**CHAPTER START**_**-**

The war rolled on. The Sol Confederacy revealed that their earlier threats were not a bluff when the families of those soldiers under Veers' command who joined him in defecting to the League were all murdered, except for those already safely under heavy League protection. Many cities full of disgruntled and disgusted civilians who held League sentiments were also massacred. The death toll among noncombatants skyrocketed as the Confederacy did everything it could to rule through fear and punish the families of those who switched over to the League. However, the Confederate military was starting to wear thin from sheer attrition, being ground down by the inexorable advance of the League.

After a few months' preparation and border skirmishes, the Phoenix League launched their attack on Confederate-controlled Africa not from Europe as expected, but from Antarctica, striking at the south. By March 7th, 2554, southern Africa was under League control (also on that day was Jane Smythe's promotion to First Lieutenant, for those who care about such things) and the Europe-stationed forces joined in the fray from the northwest. By May the 13th, most of western Africa was in League hands, and outside the Sol System the last of the colony worlds was now League-controlled as well. By July 1st, the only territory the Confederacy had left was Egypt, eastern Libya, and northern Sudan. What remained of the Confederate military fortified itself, turning the location into a fortress locale and ready to stand against the encroaching League…

**-**_**SCENE BREAK**_**-**

**Pelican Dropship Victor-914**

**Egypt**

**July 9****th****, 2554**

Melody readied her ever-present modified twin blasters, the physically-10-year-old looking out at the group in the dropship with her – Miles, Harry, 'Shep', Claudia, Jem & Jen, Klara, and Ishtar. Over the last several days, the League had launched their final assault on what little territory the Confederacy had left. Sudan and Libya were now under near-100% League control, the Confederacy having fallen back to around Cairo and fortifying it with everything they had. Now, strike teams were being sent in to disable pivotal points in the Confederacy's defense network. The team led by Melody and Ishtar were responsible for guarding a demolition squad so they could place charges and blow a hole in a large metal barrier that was impeding the progress of League armor (AN: can you see I'm running thin on ideas?), and then were to get driven over to a structure where they would disable a network of AA guns (which were keeping dropships from simply carrying troops over aforementioned barrier) and a shield projector.

The dropship flew lower, dodging a doomed Confederate drone fighter that was on its way down in flames, and flying in to where the demo team was waiting. The rear hatch opened, and the dropship hovered about two feet off the ground. The team disembarked, and the Pelican then rose back up and flew off in search of further missions as two of the demolition team members ran up to the Special Forces group.

"Damn" the first demoman said. "They sent all you big-name guys to help us in this? Guess this means our target's more important than we thought."

"We're ready to move as soon as you folks are" the second said.

"All right" Ishtar said. "Jem, Jen, Claudia, Klara, you're with me; we'll escort Demo Team 2; Mel, take Shep, Miles, & Harry and guard Team 1."

"Got it" Mel said, and then turned to the demolitions team. "Okay, Bomb-Boys, let's get going."

The two groups moved out, jogging across the area and toward the large barrier up ahead; Ishtar ran at the front of Group 2, her shield ready, while Melody ran in the center of Group 1. The first shot came from a Confederate war-droid up ahead, the bolt being deflected harmlessly by Ishtar's shield; in response, she brought her gun to bear and fired a shell of "acid rust", which impacted the droid in the chest and very quickly destroyed it. A Drakonian rebel that tried to charge her got its head separated from its shoulders courtesy of a swing of one of Ishtar's twin swords, which she, in one smooth motion, pulled free from its magnetic attachment to her back, swung and struck, and then sheathed again. Over with Group 1, Shepherd's 'Lancer' assault rifle fired, gunning down a Confederate soldier that had been about to throw a contact-fuse sonic grenade; thankfully, it had yet to leave his hand and did not fall from his grip upon his death, and thus its countdown was not set off as the team rushed past the body.

The groups soon reached the barricade; the Demolition Teams activated their energy shields and their magnetic-grip boots, and began to ascend the wall, their HUDs directing them to strategic "shatter-points" to place their charges at. The soldiers below got ready, as a platoon of Confederate war-droids led by a half-dozen human soldiers came closer. Jenny's BR55 fired, a three-round burst cutting down one of the six Confederate soldiers. Claudia's blaster rifle fired in single-shot mode as she methodically picked off droids that she got clear shots at. Miles' MA37 assault rifle opened up, Miles firing the gun in short, controlled bursts to improve accuracy as he cut down a few more droids. Harry added his Koprulu-made C14 "Impaler" assault rifle to the attack, kinetic-penetrator bullets hammering the droids' armor plating, wearing the defense down and hitting vital components. A zealous Confederate soldier charged forward toward the group, only to die at the hands of Shepherd, his C.O.G. "Gnasher" shotgun blasting the foolish man's chest; Shep's Lancer then joined the fire.

Melody fired her twin blasters, scoring a headshot right through an armored Confederate soldier's helmet visor; the man (or woman; the armor made it hard to tell) crumpled in a heap, his/her momentum carrying the body forward a few feet. Klara fired her M392 Marksman Rifle, taking out a fourth Confederate soldier and two more droids. The fifth Confederate soldier met his end courtesy of an explosive blaster-bolt shell from Ishtar's gun, which then switched to acid-rust blaster mode and proceeded to messily disable any droids it hit. The last one took a frag grenade to the face courtesy of Jem's launcher, leaving the war-droids as the only opposition. The League strike-force quickly and methodically cut them down, Ishtar using her indestructible shield to protect those whose personal energy shields went low under the enemy fire.

"We're done!" the demo-team leader shouted as he and his team made their way down to horizontal ground.

"That was fast" Claudia commented.

"Hey, when you're charged with placing blow-shit-up charges in the middle of a warzone, you _have _to be fast. Now c'mon; let's get some distance before we reduce this eyesore to scrap metal."

The group quickly got a few hundred feet from the wall. The Demo-Team leader checked the comm., ensuring that the other teams assigned to other parts of the wall had done their job. Satisfied, he nodded.

"Three… two… one… Boom."

After a few seconds, a cascade of surprisingly-powerful explosions rippled all along a two-kilometer-long stretch of the five-kilometer-long wall, and soon said wall came crashing down, to the cheers of the demo-teams. A fleet of droids flew in low, grabbing hold of several piles of rubble with tractor-beams and hefting them out of the way, making paths for vehicles and troops to advance. A pair of Troop-Transport Warthogs then rode up to the strike-team, and the team piled in to the two vehicles, which then floored it, driving through one of the newly-made paths, a column of more heavily-armed vehicles flooding in behind them. They drove for at least 20 minutes, driving around and past scuffles between League troops and retreating Confederate forces.

A ways ahead, there was a gigantic translucent blue dome, an energy shield, covering Cairo – the Confederates' last bastion on Earth. Soon, the strike-team's objective came into view: a fair-sized three-story structure, and at the top was a spire that projected a curving beam that fed the massive shield covering the city; furthermore, the control center for local AA defenses was inside somewhere. At the base of the structure, a group of Centaur tanks and Gauss Warthogs were mopping up the ground defenses, and the two Troop 'Hogs soon arrived at the place, and the team dismounted and headed for the entrance.

The door was sealed; a breaching charge fixed that problem. Ishtar led, crouched behind her shield which absorbed and deflected the resulting barrage of blaster-fire. Jem fired a grenade over her head, destroying one heavy guard-droid and heavily damaging the other, which was then dealt with as Ishtar smashed it with her shield, knocking it to the floor, and then struck down at the droid's neck with the edge of the shield, decapitating it. The team filed in. Melody, Miles, and Harry led the way into the next room, Melody laying down a withering barrage of blaster-fire as Miles fired a 40mm grenade from his assault rifle's under-slung launcher at a heavily-armored Confederate soldier in the corner, dealing considerable damage to the durable armor, leaving it vulnerable to a barrage from Harry's spike-rifle, punching holes through the armor and its wearer, who slumped against the wall. Mel's twin blasters killed two more droids, and Claudia's blaster rifle gunned down a third that was carrying a disruptor rifle.

The next room was just as defended. Klara used her speed and small size to flit about, dodging shots, drawing fire, and making deadly-accurate shots with her M6C/SOCOM, her kills including the second-in-command of the Confederates defending this structure. Ishtar's gun fired two explosive blaster shells, scrapping a destroyer-droid that hadn't got its shields up in time after rolling in, along with a Confederate sniper. Jem & Jen joined in, their MA5Cs firing at anything wearing Confederate colors, and Shepherd's Gnasher fragmented the heads of a pair of Confederate soldiers who got too close. When the room was clear, it became clear that Jem & Jen were arguing again, and probably had been during the entire fight over a private channel. A shoving match ensued, and in response Ishtar walked over, grabbed hold of both of them, knocked them together, and tossed them halfway across the room. Suitably chastised, the twins picked up their weapons and fell in line.

The entrance to the stairs was guarded by a single destroyer-droid. An ion grenade took care of its shields, and several precision bolts from Claudia's rifle took it down. They hurried up the stairs, stopping at the door that led to the second floor proper. Shepherd readied a flash-bang grenade, triggered it, opened the door a crack, tossed it in, and pulled the door shut. A flash of light from the crack under the door, and a muffled bang, along with several cries of alarm and pain, stated the grenade's effectiveness. Shepherd then busted the door down, his Lancer firing, and Melody's pistols joined in. The weakened guards were quickly dealt with as the rest of the team filed in.

The door to the next room was swung open, and the two Confederate soldiers who tried to rush through met their end courtesy of a shot from Jem's grenade launcher. Ishtar led again, her shield deflecting most shots while her personal energy shield took care of the few that came in from angles her metal one couldn't handle. Her handheld cannon fired, explosive blaster shells taking out several Confederate soldiers and war-droids. Claudia moved in next, the white-haired girl's blaster rifle gunning down several. Klara and the twins added their fire, and soon the room was clear.

Klara then walked over to a console, using the skills her adoptive older sister Kate had taught her and cracking the terminal's defenses. Several keystrokes, and one uploading of a pre-prepared program, and the Confederate anti-air defenses for this sector were down. She briefly removed her helmet, wiping some sweat from her brow… and leaving her open to a head-petting from Ishtar, which caused her to blush and fidget, and she soon put her helmet back on to hide her face.

"Now all we have left is the shield projector, right?" Miles asked.

"To the top floor!" Claudia said with much ham, including a dramatic pointing gesture in the general direction of the stairs.

The team hurried along, Shepherd's Gnasher taking down the two guards at the base of the stairway. They made their way up the stairs, finding the final door open to a large room filled with Confederate troops and droids. Melody and Claudia's blasters immediately began filling the air with precision blue death, while Ishtar fired acid-rust shots at every droid she got in her sights. The mini-base's commander met his end courtesy of a DMR shot through the eye from Klara, while Shepherd's shotgun boomed again and again, and assault rifles cut down anything Confederate in sight.

Once everything in the room not League-affiliated was dead, Melody walked over to a control panel and plugged in her datapad, uploading the pre-prepared program. She watched the displays as the shield projector's power supply went haywire, and a series of muffled explosions overhead signaled as the projector essentially destroyed itself. There was the sound of creaking metal as the weakened spire surrendered to gravity, toppling over and soon hitting the ground with a thud. The team made their way up to the roof, seeing the twisted metal where the spire once stood.

All across the area, similar operations disabled multiple shield projectors. Finally, the city-wide shield flickered, failed, and died. Several seconds later, a fireball made its presence known as the _Striking Hammer _descended from low orbit, stopping several hundred meters up. It flew over the city, every single one of its ventral guns opening fire on armor depots, airfields, artillery stations, every Confederate military target in sight. It stopped and hovered at a slight angle, so that its nose – and its fusion cannon – was pointed directly at the Confederate's main headquarters.

"Wonder what the Confeds will throw at us next?" Shepherd mused.

Suddenly, received a message over her comm. Her visor was depolarized, allowing the look of astonished, disbelieving shock to be plainly visible to everyone else in the group.

"Mel?" Miles asked. "What's wrong?"

"…They surrendered." Her voice was soft, almost whispering, and utterly shocked.

"What?"

"The Sol Confederacy… just surrendered. We… We won. After three years of Hell… we won."

A smile very slowly crept onto her face, as she turned to face the group.

(Insert StarCraft II Terran Campaign Mission Victory Music)

"We… We won. We won! It's over! WE WON!-!-!"

Shock reigned. But as, all across the area, Confederate soldiers laid down their arms while their war-droids shut down, and the cheers of League personnel began to fill the air for kilometers around, the reality sank in.

It was over. The most devastating war in human history was over. And the Phoenix League was victorious.

Soon, the squad's voices joined the millions cheering.

**-**_**SCENE BREAK**_**-**

On July 10th, 2554 AD, the Sol Confederacy officially signed their surrender to the Phoenix League. Over the next two days, every surviving Confederate personnel and Confederate-loyal civilian took part in a massive exodus from the Sol System; this was repeated across human space. The Phoenix League council took pity and gave the battered and shrunken Confederacy control over Sub-Sector East Outer, centered around the world Outreach on the far edge of the Outer Colonies.

On July 13th, the final bits of Confederate resistance fell in the Aldaris System, signaling the total cessation of hostilities. The 14th was officially declared Victory Day; all across League space, celebrations were held, as were memorial services for the fatalities of the war.

During the course of the war, from outset to end and across all of human space, the Confederate military, with started at 700,050,000, suffered 655,725,207 fatalities, roughly 93.7% of the entire Confederate Armed Forces; utter devastation. The Phoenix League, which had total of 4,530,105,080 people, lost 479,500,420 – approximately 10.6% of their numbers dead. The rest of humanity – pirates, traders, civilians, et cetera – saw 1,220,030,040 fatalities out of 4,770,000,509 people – 25.6%, many of them due to late-war Confederate atrocities/massacres. All in all, 2,355,255,667 out of 10,000,155,589 humans were dead by the end of the war – 23.55% of the entire galaxy-wide human population. In terms of lives lost, it was not only the deadliest war in human history, but also the deadliest war the entire Milky Way Galaxy had seen in over 40,000 years.

Historians would call the war many things – the First League-Confederacy War, the Independence War, the Innocents' Vengeance; many called the Terran theater of the war – which saw the heaviest fighting and the biggest names – World War IV, while some disgruntled Confederates called it the Penitatas Uprising.

The League dropped "Insurrectionist" from their title, taking the name "Phoenix League Federation". A few of its all-military population retired in order to take up vital civilian jobs not already filled in by League-loyal civilians. The League worked quickly and efficiently to set up what little bits of proper government they hadn't already got running, and got busy repairing any and all damage to infrastructure and planetary health. By some miracle, not a single animal species was rendered extinct by the planet-spanning war. The League set up a system to keep their weapons and vehicles maintained in the event of future hostilities against other outside forces. Mindful of becoming lax and weak during peacetime like the Confederacy had, the League's people decided right off the bat to maintain a large, powerful, and elite-trained military.

**-**_**SCENE BREAK**_**-**

Things progressed smoothly. The Rigellians finally returned in mid-August, assisting any people – military or civilian – who required psychological counseling due to their experiences, as well as applying their gift for agriculture to help keep the League on its feet. On September 27th, an official full political and military alliance was formed between the Phoenix League and the Jalaxian Republic.

On October 31st, Kate Scott-Compton, now head of the League's Office of Naval Intelligence, unveiled Project Hermes, her findings on Slipstream Space travel, puzzled out by studying and reverse-engineering the _Black Talon_'s slipstream drive and by studying data in the ancient forge underneath Antarctica. On January 20th of 2555, the first slipspace-capable vessel other than the _Talon_ was readied: the refitted ex-Confederate _Wave_-class Cruiser _Atlantica_. A test run to the Pi3 Orionis system (26 light-years from Earth) proved 100% successful, reaching the system in just half an hour, compared to the Confederate hyperspace drive's two hours to reach the same system.

April 13th of 2555 brought about a significant development when contact was made with not one, but _three _sapient species, two of which the Confederacy had never formally acknowledged the existence of: the Kyyreni, the Elvaan, and the Lucavi. The three races had apparently, about three years earlier, entered into a mutually-beneficial three-way politico-military and trade alliance, known informally as the Tripartate. This was a bit of a surprise, as the Kyyreni had a reputation as a stand-alone warrior culture, while the Lucavi were, according to what little data the League had, quite isolationist when it came to dealing with other races. Nonetheless, these three races had indeed banded together, and now extended an offer of alliance with the Phoenix League.

It soon became clear why. It was well-known that the Kyyreni considered many things about the Confederacy and its policies "distasteful" (violently so, in fact), but the Lucavi's scouts had also seen the instability and cloaked tyranny of the Confederacy, which drove them to deliberately avoid contact whenever possible; said philosophy was also adhered to by the Elvaan once they and the Lucavi set up an information-sharing network. The three races had sat back and watched the war intently, and the eventual revelations of the Confederacy's true depravity had only strengthened their dislike of that government. And of course, they'd been watching the League in the nine months since the end of the war, and liked what they saw, especially when compared to the previous order.

The Tripartate turned out to be a big help. The Kyyreni helped to strengthen League military through training and war-gear; the Elvaan were some of the best pilots in the galaxy; and the Lucavi were scouts and assassins beyond compare, and had uncanny eye for detail – over the next several years, the Lucavi would go on to become readily associated with the League's ONI.

On May 27th, 2556, League scouts discovered something incredible in the Artanis System (formerly called the Zeta Doradus System): an artificial planetoid that was soon revealed to be a truly gigantic forge/factory, made by the same long-gone race who'd created the forges found and used in the Sol System during the war, only capable of making larger constructs, and of creating "custom" builds off of new templates rather than relying on designs gathered from other realms. The League's scientists managed to uncover and awaken its long-dormant slipstream drive and transport it to the Sol System, placing it in a stable orbit between Mars and the asteroid belt.

The League promptly began using it to construct a new generation of warships, ones that were more advanced and capable than their few old Confederate-made vessels. These new ship classes – the _Ember_-class frigate, _Spark_-class destroyer, _Blaze_-class cruiser, _Inferno_-class heavy cruiser, _Conflagration_-class carrier, and _Explosion_-class supercarrier – combined top design elements from all the "member races" of the burgeoning alliance: armor and structural bracing of Drakonian design, Lucavi-made communications and sensor gear, Jalaxian engines and power-plants, Kyyreni-designed weapons (along with the equally-devastating weapon designs of the UNSC, Koprulu Terrans, and Republic), Elvaan-made shields, and Rigellian medical tech for the ships' med-bays.

The data held in the forge-world also allowed Dr. Scott-Compton to complete her research in Project Zeus, and soon Earth had a defensive network of "Super" magnetic accelerator cannon stations in geosynchronous orbit. The forge-world's resources also led to further refinements to slipspace technology; June 26th 2556 saw the unveiling of the Mark-2 slipstream drive, which now enabled a speed of 200 light-years per hour and considerably greater precision for jump entry & exit points (a margin of error of 100 atoms' width, compared to the Mark-1's 100-kilometer margin of error).

Shortly after Victory Day 2558, Project Charon – an intensive research project undertaken by the League ONI and by Lucavi technicians – bore fruit with the _Stalker_-class Stealth Corvette, a 110-meter-long vessel outfitted with the highest-tech stealth systems of the Lucavi and of the UNSC (courtesy of the forges' data). The _Stalker_'s roles were to include gathering intel, transporting Covert-Ops or Black-Ops personnel on missions, and laying nuclear minefields. The _Stalker _was, thanks to a unique Jalaxian power-plant and engine design, a remarkably speedy and nimble vessel… which was good, as its only defense against attack, should its stealth be compromised, were pulse-laser turrets and fairly low-grade energy shields – a discovered Stalker's best bet if discovered was to run for it, retreating for a nearby allied capital ship or immediately escaping into slipspace.

Research into Project Erebus continued.

All in all things progressed rather nicely, as the Phoenix League operated smoothly, maintaining its military, keeping its economy going, and other such things.

And then, October 2nd, 2558, an attack fleet of Confederate ships jumped in between Earth and its Moon, and opened fire on League ships.

**-**_**CHAPTER END**_**-**


	7. Second War

Here we go again…

SEE CHAPTER 1 FOR DISCLAIMERS

**-**_**CHAPTER START**_**-**

**High orbit over Earth**

**October 2, 2558**

The Confederate surprise attack was quickly rallied against. League _Ember_-class frigates (480m) and _Spark_-class destroyers (500m) traded fire with Confederate _Rio_-class frigates (430m) and _Wave_-class destroyers (460m); a Confederate _Pacific_-class cruiser (855m) was blown in half by a shot from an orbital gun, while its now-homeless fighters tried to take down a Drakonian _Claw_-class cruiser (1.15km), only to all fall to its point-defense guns and fail to penetrate its thick armor; a trio of Jalaxian _Gust_-class frigates (455m) took down another _Pacific_-class, while a pair of League _Conflagration_-class carriers (2.7km) took defensive position around an orbital gun, protecting it from boarders.

It was clear that the Confederacy had _vastly _underestimated what the League who be capable of bringing to bear to protect itself; the Super-MACs, especially, caught them completely off-guard. They had expected the League to collapse in on itself shortly after the war, not prosper and flourish as it actually had.

Nonetheless, despite the defense, several fully-loaded Confederate _Pacific_-class cruisers and _Poseidon_-class carriers (1.75km) managed to slip through the defenses, other Confederate ships sacrificing themselves to allow them such, and descended through the planet's atmosphere. Soon, they had established several strong footholds on Earth, and had set up plans to weaken League military installations and perhaps even capture the two Chairwomen of the League Council. The Second League-Confederacy War had begun.

**-**_**SCENE BREAK**_**-**

**Near Munich, Germany**

**October 7****th****, 2558**

Melody Marston-Johnson's twin blasters fired, taking down another Confederate war droid. The physically-14-year-old girl looked around, observing the broken forms of the various Confederate battle-droids surrounding her and John Shepherd. A Confederate stronghold had been detected in this area, and she & her team had been sent in to disable its defenses and leave it easy prey for the League's main force to take out. The rest of the team – Miles, Harry, and Klara (who was silent as ever and still small for her physical age of 11) – came up, having carved through a squad of Confederate soldiers.

"This is Bravo-2 to Bravo Actual" Shepherd said into the comm. "Hostiles guarding the northwest path have been neutralized."

"_Copy that_" said the voice of Phoenix League Marine Corps Major Jane Smythe. "_Primary strike-force is still en route to the objective. Sat-scans show no further resistance between you and the objective; proceed at your discretion. Out._"

The channel closed, and the team moved on. Ahead a few thousand feet was the structure they needed to infiltrate. The five Spec-Ops soldiers hurried along, moving between trees to avoid detection and soon reaching the entrance. Shep pulled out his TACPAD and plugged it into the electronic lock, and after a few seconds the door slid open. John and Harry led, wielding a 'Gnasher' shotgun and an M90A shotgun, respectively, while Melody with her twin blasters and Klara with her M7S SMG went next, and then Miles, wielding a silenced MA5C assault rifle, brought up the rear.

It was a simple enough assignment: disable the base's communications array and automated heavy turrets. The quintet moved in, sneaking past patrols and silently assassinating those few guards they couldn't sneak past. Soon, they reached the control room for the comm. array. There was one soldier and a trio of battle-droids stationed in this small room; a .45-caliber shot from Klara's M6C/SOCOM pistol killed the former, while the latter were quickly gunned down by Melody before they could react. Klara walked over and sliced into the terminal (she had been studying under Kate in the field of slicing/hacking for a few years now) and shut down the communications array without alerting the rest of the base, also setting up a program to _keep _it shut down while fooling any who checked it into thinking it was up.

They moved on, stealthily reaching the stairway and making it down to the basement level without incident. They went left and forward, taking out a trio of guards with little difficulty, and reached the control room for the base's external auto-defense systems. Klara inputted the pre-prepared viral code, and soon the exterior auto-guns were overloaded with far more power than they were meant to have, and exploded & melted. An alarm began to sound, announcing total failure of external defenses, and an armed technician ran in only to be gunned down by Miles and his assault rifle.

The quintet doubled back the way they came, carefully avoiding the people now starting to hustle about. They made it up to ground level without incident, and when they were discovered close to the exit Shep and Harry's shotguns made short work of the opposition. They hurried to the exit, running amongst the trees and avoiding further detection. A few minutes later, the four fully-loaded dropships descended upon the Confederate base, as Melody's team were quietly extracted from the area.

**-**_**SCENE BREAK**_**-**

**Northeast of Beirut, Lebanon**

**October 9****th****, 2558**

Leonid Dragovich fired his plasma shell cannon again, the shot hitting a Confederate soldier in the head; the man's head promptly ceased to be, most of it vaporized. Nearby, Claudia fired precision shots from her customized DC-15 blaster rifle on semi-auto, taking down a line of Confederate war-droids. The girl was a superb shot, able to hit targets with her rifle that most needed a dedicated sniper rifle to hit. She also regularly served as the "heart" of any team she was in, easing tensions, making newbies feel less tense, and was one of the few people capable of breaking up a fight between the McLaughlin twins.

Speaking of which, the twins were currently focusing assault rifle fire on another squad of Confederate soldiers, displaying the symmetry and teamwork that they only displayed in the thick of heavy fighting (mainly because it was the only time they were too distracted to argue with each other). Shots from Jem's Lancer punched holes in a Confederate soldier's chest, while bullets from Jen's MA5C tore through the head of another. As the last of the enemy soldiers fell, the two let out a simultaneous short cheer, and then realized what they'd just done and turned to glare daggers at each other.

The Confederate attack on the League outpost here finally waned; enemy reinforcements became rarer and with less men, and soon stopped coming altogether. They soon broke and retreated, a few of the League soldiers taking shots at the fleeing enemy. No sooner had the fight ended, however, that another began.

"I can't believe you! After all this time, and you're still trying to use me for your own ends!"

"What the hell are you talking about?-! I was killing them just like you were!"

"Yeah, and using _me _as bait! This is still just like when you used me as your tool back when we were smugglers!"

"Oh God…" a soldier muttered as he palmed his face. "Twins are at it again…"

"I can't believe I actually used to care about you!" Jem shouted. "That I actually tried to be a brother and look out for you!"

"I never asked you to!" Jen replied. "You were always too soft-hearted for your own good! And you were too stupid to check what our cargo was, and look where it got us!"

"Hey, _you _didn't think to check, either, so if I'm stupid for not asking, then so are you!"

Jenny's reply was a fist to the face, which led to Jem tackling her; almost immediately, several nearby soldiers rushed in and pulled the two apart. Dragovich walked up, his power-armored foot stomping down hard to get their attention. He glared at them both through his red HUD visor, and after several seconds they back down, allowing the soldiers to escort them to opposite sides of the area.

"I could've taken care of them" Claudia said as she walked up.

"You're welcome" Leonid replied dryly. "Come on; we need to be in Yemen by tomorrow afternoon. Get all personnel ready."

"Yes, sir."

**-**_**SCENE BREAK**_**-**

**Southwest Russia**

**October 10****th****, 2558**

"Remember: get in, get the data, get out. Short and simple."

"Whenever Smythe runs an op, it's _never _simple."

"Point. Still, one can hope…"

Miles Fairbrass and Harry Henrikson prepared themselves for this mission. They and four other Spec-Ops soldiers would infiltrate a Confederate base and retrieve vital data from their computer systems (the system had been physically isolated from the main network, making distance slicing impossible). They would then fight their way out to an extraction point. Melody and Shepherd were off running an op in Iran, so Miles & Harry had team leadership here. Klara Leads was busy helping Dr. Scott-Compton out at ONI HQ in Sydney today, so the two young men had command over a quartet of soldiers that they didn't know any of personally. Personnel from Smythe's elite "Shade Company" were providing C&C and transport.

The two King Raven helicopter dropships dropped off the team and then flew back the way they came, and the team began their stealthy advance toward their objective a few kilometers away. After nearly an hour of slow and careful advancing, the structure was in sight, atop a hill just up ahead. Corporal Baron took point, creeping through trees and across a shaded clearing.

And then a pair of spring mines popped up right in front of him, detonating at head level, punching through his energy shields and armor and killing him instantly. Before he had even hit the ground, enemy fire came from the ridge on the left.

"Ambush!"

The team took cover, some of them returning fire.

"They knew we were coming!" Harry shouted.

"This doesn't change the objective!" Miles shouted into the comm. "We've gotta get that data! Punch through to the structure!"

As soon as the fire from above let up, the team ran for it, dashing through the trees and heading for their objective. More enemy soldiers came out, and were either gunned down or bypassed. As they began to ascend the hill, more soldiers fired down on them; however, the League team proved to be better shots, and killed their obstructers without anyone's shields failing. They planted a breaching charge on the door, and the resulting blast stunned a pair of Confederate soldiers just inside, leaving them easy prey for Miles' shotgun. They rushed in, killing the soldiers in the living room, and came up to the computer set in the center of the room.

"Gonna take some time" Harry said as he plugged a device into the computer. "We need to hold them off for about 15 minutes."

"Heads up!" Corporal Griffin shouted. "Hostile dropships inbound!"

"Alright, everyone get to cover!" Miles shouted. "We need to hold 'em off! Protect the computer!"

Tables, desks, and other furniture were overturned to form cover. There were two doorways to cover; Miles, Walcroft, and Private Banes trained their weapons on the north door, Harry and Griffin on the east one. The first enemy soldiers came from the north, and were quickly gunned down by Miles' MA37, Banes' DC-15, and Walcroft's C-14. A squad of Confederate battle droids came from the east, only to fall to Harry's grenade launcher. Enemy forces kept coming, as all the while the data was slowly transferred.

Pvt. Banes backed off into cover, her shields sparking and trying to recharge. Suddenly, heavy blaster-fire rang out from behind her, as a pair of heavy battle droids emerged from the basement. The barrage of bolts struck her in the back, burning through her unshielded armor and into her torso. One bolt hit the now-unprotected back of her neck and burned clean through. She dropped to the floor, twitched, and then lay still, dead. Angered, Harry fired an ion grenade at the two interlopers, frying the droids' circuits and causing them to collapse to the ground, permanently inert. He then picked his BR55 up again and continued firing on the soldiers approaching from the east.

The battle wore on, bodies piling up by both entrances. Finally, the device attached to the computer chimed and blinked green. Harry quickly ran over, picked it up, and stuffed it in his pack.

"Okay, we've got it! Evac's on the way; let's get to the extraction point!"

The quartet headed out the north door, fighting through a gap in the enemy forces and running for the trees, heading for the clearing a few hundred meters away that would serve as an extraction point. Suddenly, there was a large explosion that engulfed Walcroft; with his shields weakened by enemy fire, the mortar shell blew him apart.

"Keep running!" Miles shouted. "Don't stop!"

They ran into the trees, dodging and weaving to avoid bullets, blaster-fire, and mortars. A mortar blast caught Griffin, blowing his leg off. "Keep going!" he shouted, and as Confederate soldiers got close he triggered his grenades; the explosion ended his life and the lives of several enemy soldiers, and also brought down a tree, crushing a few more. Miles and Harry ran for dear life toward the clearing, which was now in sight. As they reached the clearing, a mortar shell landed near Harry, knocking him off his feet and for a loop; his shields went from full to zero, and a portion of his chest armor was blown off, though it protected him from fatal damage. Miles walked over and grabbed hold of his friend, dragging him with one arm and firing his pistol with the other, as a Shade Company LAAT dropship flew in, opening fire on the pursuing Confederate soldiers.

When Harry came to fully again, he was being helped toward the waiting dropship, which Jane Smythe was stepping out of, walking toward them.

"Did you get the data?"

"Yes, ma'am" Miles reported.

"Good" Smythe said, as she put her arm around Harry's other shoulder, as if to help get him to the dropship. "Then that's one less loose end."

BANG

The point-blank shot from Smythe's old revolver punched through Harry's torso, tearing through a kidney and slicing his aorta open. He fell backwards in shock. Before Miles could react, Smythe turned her pistol to him and fired; the bullet tore through his skull, and the lifeless body toppled to the ground. As Harry faded in and out of consciousness, finding himself tossed in a pit, his suit's power core set by the Shade Company troops to "controlled overload" that would detonate and destroy his vital organs, he heard Melody's voice, static-laden, over the comm.:

"Mi-, -ry, we're -der att-ythe's troo-. Do no- mythe! I rep- -ot trust Smy- -k out!"

**-**_**SCENE BREAK**_**-**

**Same Day**

**Sana'a, Yemen**

Claudia Marrows-Nightray fired her customized DC-15 blaster rifle, blasting/burning a hole through a Confederate soldier's skull; the assault speeder he'd been piloting drifted out of control and smashed into the highway's center divider. The M831 Troop Transport Warthog she currently rode in hurried down the highway, now unmolested. A Jalaxian soldier carrying a grenade launcher sat across from her. Leonid Dragovich sat in the front passenger's seat, AM-X3 Plasmacaster at the ready.

Claudia closed her eyes and thought. For some reason, she thought back to when she first joined the League, a little while before the First War broke out. She also thought to before that, remembering her old "family": Heskov, Silvia, and Eve. A mind-scan made a few years back that she _had _known what had happened to Eve, but someone had placed a memory block there. She continued her line of thought, expecting the usual dead-end, but this time she found a "thread" that led to that sealed memory, and clutched at it for dear life, following it to its source. The memory block had "degraded" with age. The Jalaxian stared as Claudia seemed to slow her breathing, almost going into a trance. Yes, there'd been an inhumanly-deep voice, a flash of red light, and… and…

"I remember!"

The Jalaxian practically jumped at Claudia's sudden proclamation. Leonid turned around in his seat.

"Remember what?"

"What happened to Eve, my old friend, my former _penni_-sister! …My God, what exactly was that she found? There was a presence, and Eve had this dark look on her face. It felt like-"

She was interrupted by blaster fire hitting the sides of the vehicle, as three more Confederate attack speeders came up from behind. The driver of the Transport Hog swerved back and forth to dodge a few shots, and when the speeders had to stop and let their guns cool, Leonid brought up his cannon and fired. The explosive plasma shell hit the engine of the leading speeder, causing a large compound explosion that consumed the vehicle and its pilot. The Jalaxian fired a grenade that wedged in with the second bike's pilot, blowing his torso open and causing him to spin out of control and crash.

"Hang on!" the Hog's driver shouted. "We're almost at the base! Vice-Chairman Devine is there waiting for you guys; says he wants a report on that op in Beijing!"

Soon enough, they reached the outer perimeter of Base Arabia, the League's headquarters for the Middle East. The pursuing Confederate assault speeder couldn't turn back in time, and was blown to bits by a defending Scorpion tank's cannon.

"Devine's inside" the driver reported. "Better hurry."

As the three got out of the vehicle and headed for the entrance to the base interior, a static-laden yet still comprehensible transmission was captured over broadband comm. – Melody's transmission. Claudia listened in growing shock.

"Smythe has… betrayed us?"

"Indeed" Dragovich said. "Jane Smythe has betrayed the Phoenix League."

"But… why?" Claudia muttered, her back to Dragovich as she stared out toward the highway.

"For several reasons, I would say. Smythe seeks power and influence in the world, more than she has now. She seeks the chance to make a name for herself, to get her name written in the history books. And she seeks revenge against people whom she feels wronged her several years ago, before the war. But even with her vaunted Shade Company, she cannot accomplish her goals alone. So she made a deal. A deal…"

There was the unmistakable sound of his plasma-cannon charging up.

"…with me!"

Claudia spun around to face Dragovich… and took a shot to the lower torso from his plasma-caster at near-point-blank range, with her energy shields deactivated beforehand because she thought she was safe. Her armor failed nigh-instantly, and the superheated plasma shell blew her torso open, vaporizing most of her organs and reducing what was left to burning, disintegrating meat. She collapsed backward, her arms reaching down, an instinctual attempt to protect parts of her body that were no longer there.

"Wh… What have you done?" She choked out.

"What was necessary" Dragovich replied, as he stood over her, placed the "barrel" of his cannon against her chest, and fired again. Claudia's heart and lungs ceased to be; death followed swiftly. Dragovich then turned his cannon to the Jalaxian, firing again; the alien dove to the side, but the blast hit his right arm, blowing it off at the elbow. The few other soldiers in the area – standard ground troops - finally reacted, opening fire, but by then Dragovich had activated his armor's energy shields. He drew his blaster pistol and returned fire, killing two League troopers. A Centaur rolled out from a nearby garage, but Dragovich fired his plasma cannon at the turret, scrapping it irreparably. The troopers fell back, and Dragovich made his way into the base.

John Devine walked through the wide hallway of Base Arabia, the McLaughlin twins to either side of him. They'd picked up the recent transmission; though he couldn't show it, John was worried for Mel on a personal level. He was one of the few who knew the history between Melody and Jane, so he knew that, sooner or later, the latter would be going after the former with everything she had. He looked at the twins; even they were too caught off-guard by this sudden twist to bother snapping at each other.

"Hey…" Jen asked. "Where's Claudia? Weren't she and the others supposed to be here by now?"

John's reply was cut off as, up ahead, two League soldiers ran into the hall. As they began to turn toward Devine and the twins, an explosion went off just out of their view, knocking the soldiers off their feet and unconscious. Leonid Dragovich stepped through, turned to face Devine and the twins, gave a malicious grin (visible as his faceplate was retracted, leaving his nose & mouth visible while his eyes remained hidden), pointed his cannon at them, and fired.

Long-buried protective instincts came to the forefront all at once. There was a sudden movement, and Jen & John were left staring in shock and horror as the site registered. Jem stood between them and Dragovich. He'd taken a direct hit to the mid-torso from the devastating weapon. The inside of his body was visible, charred and blackened. Now pale, he turned his head to look his sister in the eye.

"Jen…" he struggled to whisper out. "Run…"

And then he collapsed, falling to the floor, unmoving.

"Going to insult him as usual, child?" Dragovich snarked at Jen.

Jen stood, shaking and trembling horribly. In her mind, the hatred of Jem abruptly vanished, the psychological manipulation of the Confederates so long ago coming undone. She remembered Jem as he really was, all the things he did for her, all the times he looked out for her… all the times that he & she were brother and sister.

There was a terrifying and heart-wrenching cry as, consumed by grief-stricken rage, Jen McLaughlin charged Leonid Dragovich, fire and fury in her eyes, which had tears of grief and rage falling from them. He fired a shot, but she dodged, and she pulled from her belt an extremely rare item, experimentally created drawing from databanks on the _Black Talon_; a two-pronged blade of superheated bluish-white plasma. Dragovich responded by directing all of his energy shield's power to his right arm and cannon. He blocked the opening strike, the shield flaring as it repulsed the blade; she struck again from a different angle, and he moved to respond. They fell into a deadly dance, and bodyguards took the opportunity to get to John Devine and rush him out of the area.

"_KILL YOU!-! __**FUCKING KILL YOU!-!-!**_"

The duel continued in earnest, Dragovich putting all his effort into holding off the enraged berserker's unyielding strikes. Jen fought ferociously, fueled by the pain of loss, the agony in her heart at her beloved brother's untimely end. Soon, she partially broke through Dragovich's defenses. There was the sound of sizzling flesh and a grunt of pain as the tip of the plasma blade sliced across Dragovich's left eye.

Unfortunately, the anger at this fueled Leonid's own counterattack. With the twitch of a finger inside the cannon, a quartet of long, wicked blades sprang out ringing the tip of the cannon. He headbutted her, stunning her briefly, and then struck with the quadruple bayonet in an upward strike. The four blades punched all the way through Jen's chest, actually lifting her off the ground. He then fired the cannon point-blank, vaporizing her chest and the organs within, leaving the burnt remnant of her spine as the only thing holding her together. He tossed her aside with the weapon, one of the blades slicing through the spinal cord in the motion, sending Jen tumbling away in two pieces, her upper half landing next to the body of her brother. He retracted the blades on his weapon and, ignoring the pain from his now-useless eye, continued toward the data control center.

A few minutes later, Dragovich and those loyal to him left Base Arabia in four stolen dropships. As they made their escape, Ishtar Solos arrived at the base, observing the carnage – burning machinery, the cries and groans of the wounded, and… her heart ached as she spotted the bodies of the twins, lying next to each other, hands clasped. She caught a look outside as Claudia's body had a tarp draped over it by a stone-faced technician. The Elvaan girl closed her eyes tightly, struggling against the emotions roiling within her.

'I'm so sorry. I failed you…'

**-**_**SCENE BREAK**_**-**

"Well, well, well, if it isn't little Janie. You've got a lot to answer for, little girl."

"Colonel Veers. You know, I've wanted to kill you for a while now. This is actually kind of… _exciting _for me."

"Hah! Do your worst, child! You ain't takin' this old bastard without a fight!"

**-**_**CHAPTER END**_**-**


	8. Setting Right

EDITED 2/9/2014

"Anger ventilated often hurries toward forgiveness; anger concealed often hardens into revenge." - Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton

SEE CHAPTER 1 FOR DISCLAIMERS

_**-CHAPTER START-**_

**Iran**

**October 10****th****, 2558**

"Fairbrass, Henriksen, come in! Harry, Miles, do you copy? …Does _anyone _copy, over?-!"

"They're dead, Shep. Jane's disposed of them all."

"…Smythe betrayed us…"

"You have to trust someone to be betrayed by them; I never did. …This is Tone calling Father Hawk. Do you have our location?"

"_Affirmative, Tone. But I'm not the only one who does. You have Confederate troops approaching from one direction, and Smythe's Shade Company from the other._"

"Then we'll kill them all."

"_Or just let them kill each other. Either way, I'll see you and Flock at the extraction point. Out._"

**-****_SCENE BREAK_****-**

**Southwest Iran**

**October 10****th****, 2558**

Gunnery Sergeant Melody Marston-Johnson ran, dodging and weaving between the grounded wrecks of Confederate dropships. All around her, Confederate and Shade forces exchanged fire. Her IFF tracker showed that John Shepherd was 14 meters to her right and heading in the same direction she was. They rushed through wreckage, shooting anyone who got in their way. They ran and shot and fought and killed, focused on getting to safety. As they reached a clearing filled with fighting troops, Victor-914 soared overhead, the ground troops below too distracted with trying to kill each other to pay the dropship any mind.

"_Jeez, it looks like a riot down there!_" Kelvin Compton said over the comm. "_I won't be able to touch down for too long, so hurry up!_"

The duo soon reached an old landing pad and opened fire on the squad of Confederate soldiers there, killing them quickly. Soon the Pelican swooped in, its chin-mounted minigun shredding a squad of Shade Company troops who were getting too close. It set down, rear hatch open, and Mel & Shep hurried in. With them secure, the dropship took off and closed its hatch, getting high enough up that hostile fire couldn't hit it and then heading for Afghanistan, where Smythe had supposedly set up base.

Fifteen minutes later, as the dropship flew through the sky, Melody sat alone in the passenger area while Shep was up discussing things with the pilot. She reached her left hand into her pack and pulled out an old holo-picture of her, Miles, and Harry as kids, laughing and smiling together. After a few seconds, a droplet fell on the projector, distorting the image. Melody slammed her right fist against the metal wall behind her, causing a loud clang. A sob escaped through clenched teeth, as tears fell from her squeezed-shut eyes.

Her 'brothers' were gone, taken from her. And she made a solemn vow that Smythe would pay in blood.

**-****_SCENE BREAK_****-**

**Haivoron, Haivoronskyi Raion, Kirovohrad Oblast, Ukraine**

**Same Day; 40 minutes later**

The door to the base was blasted down, and a large number of League soldiers, led by Ishtar, rushed in, quickly beginning to exchange fire with the outnumbered Dragovich-loyal defenders. Nearly all of Dragovich's soldiers here were hired guns – mercenaries, privateers, et cetera – along with a few full-blown League soldiers who turned out to be more loyal to him than the League. In very little time, all local resistance was dead.

"Spread out" Ishtar ordered. "Find him."

"Ma'am, we've just received word from Colonel Veers" a Sergeant reported. "Smythe has taken control of Site H-C; most of Veers' troops are dead, but one of our Black-Op guys managed to get Veers himself out of there. He's on the way here to provide C&C for us."

"Have we been able to contact with him?"

"Yes, ma'am. Do you want to contact him now?"

"Yes; patch me through."

After a few seconds, the commlink came to life.

"_Well, Solos, it seems like we've all been caught up in a hell of a nasty surprise._"

"Yes, sir. My forces and I are currently assaulting Dragovich's base. Any word from Marston and Shepherd?"

"_Last I heard, they were plannin' to try and take on Smythe and her Shade Company all by themselves. I ain't too worried; them Shade boys are good, but they ain't anywhere near Marston's level, especially when she has Shep with her. All the same… I'm gonna see if I can reroute some dropships to hold near the area, so they can swoop in and play hero if things go sour._"

"I hope Melody knows what she's doing…"

**-****_SCENE BREAK_****-**

**Site H-C**

**Afghanistan**

**Same Day; 20 minutes later**

"_I'll meet you two at the exfil point in two hours_."

"Don't bother, Hawk; odds are we won't be coming back from this op."

"_…I see. Godspeed, then._"

Two figures, their armor's reactive panels changed to "Desert" passive camouflage, advanced across the sands and rocks. They soon reached a dirt road patrolled by a pair of guards, who were quickly and quietly dealt with. The duo ducked through shadows until they reached a cliff face. They rappelled down, getting the drop on a pair of unlucky guards near a cave entrance, quietly killing them and then sneaking into the cave. They let several guards pass and assassinated the one left behind, and then advanced further into the cave.

They went around another small group of guards, and ascended a staircase into a dark cave, activating their HUD's VISR systems. As they neared the exit door, however, it was opened from the other side, revealing five Shade Company troops. Melody immediately pulled up her twin blaster pistols and opened fire, Shepherd joining a half-second later with his M7S. Between Melody's blaster weaponry (which wasn't as loud as projectile weapons) and John's silenced weapon, it was unlikely people would hear the weapons-fire, and the two then dragged the five bodies into hidden, shadowed corners to delay their discovery. They then moved through the door, ending up back outside on a narrow cliffside path.

Unfortunately, at this point some previous body must have been discovered, for a general Intruder Alert went out over the Shade Company comm., and as the duo moved along the cliff-edge, they reached an open area with a half-dozen enemy soldiers, three of which spotted them and pointed them out. The enemy opened fire, and the League pair took cover behind a boulder. Shepherd grabbed a nearby arm-shield and crouched-walked out, drawing fire; Melody took the chance to shoulder her C.O.G. "Longshot" rifle and start sniping, picking off the hostiles one by one. With the area clear, the duo advanced, hurrying along the cliffside and leaving pretense of stealth behind.

They soon reached the entrance of another cave, guarded by a squad of 10 Shade troops. Shep tossed a pair of frag grenades, killing three of them. He then dropped into cover, brought out his M392 rifle, and started picking off more, Melody joining in with precision shots from her twin blasters. The way was soon clear, and they advanced into the cave.

"_Ma'am!_" a worried voice called out over the Shade Company comm. "_They're tearing through us! How the Hell can two people do this much damage?-!_"

"_It's Johnson and her sidekick, most likely_" Smythe's voice replied. "_Hold them off long enough for the guys in the C&C room to finish up._"

"_Y-Yes, ma'am_"

In the next, open-roofed area of the cave, a squad of Shade troops fast-roped down into the chamber; Mel and Shep managed to gun down three before they could land and get to cover, but the other nine returned fire, forcing the duo to duck behind a pair of boulders. Signaling Shepherd, Melody tossed out a flash-bang grenade, disabling most of them. She then popped up, gunning the stunned ones down with her dual pistols, while Shepherd used his DMR to take down the two unaffected by the flash-bang. They then advanced further into the cave, soon coming across a locked door leading to the base Command & Control center. A detonation charge took care of that, and the two stormed in, taking down the surprised four soldiers before they could finish wiping the computers in the room. Melody and Shepherd inserted pre-prepared data chips into the various computers, which scavenged every remaining bit of vital data they could fit in their storage matrices.

They made their way through the other door, soon reaching the sun-baked outside again, where three Shade Company King Ravens, loaded with troops, were just taking off – Smythe was abandoning the base and taking her soldiers with her. By now, a "small" sandstorm was starting to hit the area; likely that the Shades wouldn't try any more flight around this base for the next day or so. Melody and Shepherd raced across the open area, darting in & out of cover as they made their way towards one last cave entrance.

"_Ma'am, the storm's hitting the base too hard for me to swoop in and get you out safe_" said the voice of a Shade Company pilot over the comm.

"_Understood_" Smythe's voice replied. "_We'll take the low road. Meet me at the other end of the river._"

The duo rushed into the last cave, gunning down a last trio of guards, and soon reached a dock on a river. Smythe saw them coming and immediately hit the accelerator on her water-speeder, zooming off down the river, her two soldier passengers firing a few parting shots that had the two ducking their heads for a moment. They then laid eyes on another water-speeder moored to the dock. They piled in, and Shepherd hit the accelerator, tearing down the river in hot pursuit of their target.

**-****_SCENE BREAK_****-**

**Ukraine**

Leonid Dragovich sat in a reinforced lawn chair in the center of this roofless garden in the center of the base, seemingly heedless of the sounds of combat drawing ever nearer as he basked in the Sun, the light reflecting off his violet and black armor. Suddenly, the metal door a few meters behind him was blasted down. Dragovich calmly stood up from his seat, his back still to the doorway. There was the 'thump-thump' of power-armored boots walking through the dust, stepping over the busted door and into the garden.

"Dragovich" the girl's voice said, her tone level and devoid of emotion.

"Solos" the treacherous Major replied, still not turning to face the intruder.

"Why?" she simply asked.

"…Suffice to say, I have an… employer, a visitor from a… distant locale… who calls himself "Narud"… and my reasons for following his requests are reasons I shall not disclose to you, other than he promised me power; what type of power, I will not say. And do not bother trying to hunt him down; by now, he is likely literally on the other side of the galaxy."

"…This doesn't matter. I am going to kill you, here and now, for what you've done."

The young Russian smirked. "You can try."

In a single, sudden motion, he spun and fired a shot from his plasmacaster. Ishtar rolled to the side, coming up with her blaster-shell cannon in one hand and her shield ready in the other, and fired a shot which Dragovich ducked under, dodging by less than half a meter.

The battle was on.

**-****_SCENE BREAK_****-**

**Afghanistan**

Bullets and blaster bolts whizzed over their heads as their speeder shot down the river, weaving around obstacles as Melody hung onto Shepherd with one arm and, with her other, fired one of her pistols at any hostile she got a bead on. A pair of enemy water-speeders closed in behind them; Shepherd briefly hit the brakes, letting the two hostile craft shoot right by them on either side, leaving the surprised pilots open to well-placed shots from Melody's blaster pistol. Shepherd floored it again, racing under a bridge and outrunning the guns of the Shade Company troops on it.

Smythe's craft was in sight up ahead, escorted by two more enemy water-speeders. At this point, Shepherd lamented the fact that these light speeders had no weapons systems he could blast her with. One of the two reduced its speed, breaking off from escort and moving to close in on Melody and Shepherd. The passenger fired his pistol at them, the bullets bouncing off their speeder's front cowling. Shep responded by boosting up alongside it and then sideswiping it, throwing it off-balance and causing it to crash into the rocks lining the riverbank.

As they closed in again on their target, Melody nailed the pilot of the other escort speeder in the back of the head with a blaster bolt, causing the now-driverless craft to veer off and beach itself at high speed, tumbling end over end for hundreds of feet as it shed momentum and parts.

The chase neared a waterfall. A Shade Company "Queen Raven" heavy transport copter flew overhead, matching the speed of Smythe's craft and lowering itself to just barely above the water. Smythe's speeder drove up into it, and it began to lift off.

"Hold her steady, Shep!"

Melody took out her Longshot, took aim at the slowly ascending craft, and fired. Her aim was true; the bullet punched into the canopy and through the pilot's skull, causing the body to slump forward onto the controls. The helicopter proceeded to veer down and crash on the edge of the river below the waterfall.

Unfortunately, Shepherd could not prevent the craft he and Melody were on from going over the falls.

**-****_SCENE BREAK_****-**

**Ukraine**

The once-proud garden was a wreck, shattered stone and the burnt stems of mostly-flash-vaporized plants littering the area. Dragovich and Ishtar were constantly on the move, exchanging fire and occasionally physical blows. The center of Ishtar's shield glowed faintly from blocking a shot from Dragovich's cannon a few seconds ago, the unique structure of the shield dispersing the heat harmlessly, causing the glow to fade quickly. Ishtar returned fire, a blaster shell shooting out from her gun and barely missing Dragovich's head, the proximity causing his armor to heat. Both combatants' armor energy shields had been burned out by now.

Ishtar dodged another shot from Dragovich's cannon and, taking the chance while his weapon cooled down, charged in, holstering her blaster and drawing one of the twin swords magnetically attached to her back, making a diagonal strike at Leonid's left shoulder. He countered with a short vibrosword he'd kept sheathed until now, the two weapons meeting. They entered into a short duel, blades meeting over & over again in a frenzied clash.

Finally, Dragovich saw an opportunity. Before Ishtar could recover from blocking his latest sword strike, he brought his cannon up, inside her shield. She tried to jump back and twist to the side to avoid it, and did indeed avoid a fatal blow, but not without cost. The plasma shell hit her left arm at the elbow, and the arm was blown completely off, molten pieces of armor and small bits of charred flesh and bone scattering backward. A charred stump about halfway between her shoulder and where her elbow used to be was all that remained of her left arm. Her shield, still held in what a few seconds ago had been her hand, hit the floor with a loud clang. Even with the adrenaline running through her system, it was hard not to scream.

Even with this, Ishtar continued to try and attack, striking with her sword with renewed vigor, but the injury and exhaustion were slowing her down. However, salvation arrived in the form of a barrage of SMG rounds that hit Dragovich in the back. The combination of distance and his durable armor meant that damage was superficial, but it got his attention. He growled, spun, and fired; Klara barely ducked under the shell, the energy bleed draining her shields to 3%. Dragovich then heard movement behind him…

Things almost seemed to move in slow-motion, as Ishtar's blaster-shell cannon was brought up, held in Ishtar's remaining hand, and now pointed at his face. He was about to cry out in disbelieving rage when the gun fired. The point-blank shot scored a direct, unimpeded hit; his head ceased to exist, pieces of his helmet armor flying every which way, along with bits of charred bone and brain-matter. The now-headless body wavered for a second, and then toppled over backward.

Leonid "Shockwave" Dragovich was dead.

Ishtar lowered her weapon, standing straight and staring at the corpse, heedless of her missing arm. Dragovich was dead… but this did nothing for Claudia or the McLaughlin twins.

(START MUSIC: Transformers DOTM Soundtrack – "Sentinel Prime")

"I… failed you…" she muttered, her eyes closing. "I'm not fit to…"

"_Do not despair, child._"

Ishtar's eyes snapped open, but she was no longer in the garden, standing over Dragovich's body. Instead, she was in a strange, rocky realm, where light itself seemed to echo somehow.

"…Child?" she asked, stupefied. "I am… over 1,000 Terran years…"

"_And we are over 20 times that_" a different voice said.

Six massive figures walked out from behind the rocks, their glowing golden and blue eyes staring down at Ishtar. Strangely, she felt no fear; these beings' presence was warm, as if it said "You are safe".

"_We have been watching you for some time, Ishtar_" the first one said, his voice smooth.

"_You have fought and led others with aplomb, serving with courage and sacrifice – virtues worthy of a leader._" The second one's voice was deep, yet not threatening.

"_There is a great threat coming_" a third one said. "_One that will endanger many realms._"

"_Rarely can we contact a being in the land of the living_" a fourth said. "_There are many leaders, both extant and yet to come, who have earned our unique blessing._"

"_But for the moment, you are the only one we can gift our power to._"

"But… But I failed! I couldn't stop his betrayal! I couldn't save Claudia or the twins! I-I'm not fit to…"

"_Your recent foe was empowered by one of the several threats looming on the horizon_" the fifth figure, a female voice, said. "_This power enabled him to mask his presence and intentions from even the most skilled of empaths or telepaths among your forces; else, they would have foreseen his treason._"

"_You must understand that, although saving everyone you reasonably can is to be encouraged, to seek to save __**all**__ is foolhardy_" the last figure said. "_You will break if you try. Instead, you must do everything you possibly can, as you indeed did during this recent conflict, to rectify these situations when they transpire. Do not attempt to place burdens upon your shoulders that they are incapable of supporting._"

"_Now, our time is short_" the third figure said. "_As said, there are several dark threats coming; in nine Terran years, chains of events will lead to all of them striking at more or less the same time. Visitors from another plane will arrive and enable contact between your League and other, similar civilizations in other realms. The wars will see many leaders worthy of us, but the shifting currents of reality ensure that our ability to contact any living beings, such as we are with you now, will be extremely rare, few & far between._"

"_Thus, while we still can we shall give you what we can_" the second said. "_We are the first and last of our people capable of wielding the arcane arts. Those carrying our power carry immunity to these forces_" the words "magic", "chakra", "Force" flashed through Ishtar's mind "_when they are wielded against them, though they themselves can still call upon them. So shall it be with you._"

The six figures lifted their arms, and Ishtar felt something inexplicable flowing into and through her.

"_You shall be the first organic to receive this blessing, and likely the only one for a very long time_" the first figure spoke. "_With this power comes a title, for you to bear in addition to your birth name. Ishtar Solos… You are…_"

Back in the physical plane, Ishtar stood, head lowered and eyes closed.

"I am…"

Slowly, her head rose, and her eyes, glowing blue, opened.

"…Isis Prime."

(MUSIC END)

Footsteps could be heard approaching, and the FOF tags on Ishtar's motion tracker identified them as friendlies. The glow in her eyes died down, and she slowly turned to face the approaching group, led by Klara. The medic spotted the mangled, burnt stump of her left arm, and knew immediately that attaching the original limb would be wholly impossible. …Good thing that discovering rejuve tech had not slowed the advances in prosthetics technology over the centuries.

**-****_SCENE BREAK_****-**

**Afghanistan**

Melody, still dazed from the waterfall drop, stumbled over toward Smythe, who was leaning against a boulder, and struck out with her knife, only for Smythe to dodge it and kick her in the chest, which was unprotected as the chest-piece and helmet of her armor had come away in the violence of the landing after going over the waterfall. Before Melody could recover, her legs were swept out from under her, knocking her to the ground flat on her back. Before the disoriented, injured girl could right herself, Smythe drew her knife and performed a gravity-assisted stab into Melody's right chest, a centimeter to the right of her sternum. The pain caught her off-guard, leaving her unable to get up; this was worsened when Smythe's boot stepped on her hand, pinning it to the ground.

"I'd say I understand your pain," Smythe said, "but I'd be lying because I _can't_ truly understand it. You see, ever since that day, eight years ago, when Judge Jones tortured me in the wake of that incident, and for that period of time immediately after…" her hand absent-mindedly hovered over her own backside, remembering the "leopard-print" scarring still there "Like my lower body was on a grill over the fires of Hell itself… Had it not been for that Rigellian psyker using his powers to force me to remain conscious, I'd have passed out long before it was done. Since then… all other pain… is _numb_."

"You…" Melody wheezed out. "You almost killed me back then… that was why they…" she coughed, losing her sentence. "Even though you weren't actually trying to kill me…"

"And now I am. As I should have been doing back then."

She knelt down, grabbing hold of the handle of the knife and wiggling it around. Melody gritted her teeth, biting back a scream. A slight twist, and she failed to hold it back. Smythe released the handle and straightened up, pulling out her vintage revolver, and pointing it at Melody's head. Her finger slowly began to tighten on the trigger.

And then John Shepherd's fist impacted her face from the left, knocking her away; the bullet ricocheted off the ground two feet to the right of Melody's head. As the two got into a brawl, Melody started trying to pull herself over to the discarded gun… only for Smythe to kick her in the head, knocking her out.

Consciousness came and went, back and forth, as Melody lay on the dusty ground, while Shep and Smythe fought… a fight that Smythe was gradually winning. Smythe now had Shepherd pinned and was hammering blows down upon him, even though he'd stopped resisting, stopped responding, stopped breathing, aiming to beat him to death. So caught up in the thrill of a potential kill, she did not notice the movement off to her left.

"Jane…"

She looked up, toward Melody. The thrown knife, still stained with Melody's blood, punched through her eye and into her brain, knocking her back. Seconds later, Jane Smythe was dead.

(MUSIC: Call of Duty 4 OST: "Loyalists")

Melody's head then lay back on the ground, and her vision slowly began to blacken. But something pulled her back to consciousness: a sound, growing louder. With effort, she turned her head to the left… and saw as the League MEDEVAC Pelican swooped in, touching down 15 feet away. The rear hatch opened, and soldiers & medics spilled out. A King Raven hovered overhead, four more soldiers fast-roping down to secure the area as the copter itself kept its guns ready.

"Mel!"

Kate Scott-Compton, Head of ONI, ran over, leaning down over her old friend.

"C'mon, Mel! Focus on me! We're here. You've done it. It's gonna be alright; we'll get you patched up." She then turned to the medics, out of Melody's view. "Get your asses moving, boys! She's gonna bleed out if we don't patch her up ASAP!"

As Melody was being placed on a stretcher, she looked over to where John Shepherd still lay on the ground; his front armor was gone, and a medical technician was readying a defibrillator. Shep's prone body jumped as a shock was sent in. Mel could faintly hear someone shout "Again!", before unconsciousness claimed her.

**-****_SCENE BREAK_****-**

By October 13th, the last of Smythe's and Dragovich's followers were dead. For the part she played, 2nd Lieutenant Lisa Garrett was promoted to 1st Lieutenant on the 19th.

On October 21st, the shattered remnants of the Confederate invasion force made a full retreat from the Sol System. The Second League-Confederacy War, short as it had been, saw the deaths of 60,103 League military personnel (out of 3,250,100,205), 2,698 civilian fatalities, and out of the Confederacy's 13.5 million strong invasion force only 1,498,500 survived to flee the Sol Sector; the war's total fatality count was 12,064,301.

John Shepherd survived, but was forced to take injury-mandated temporary retirement. In late 2560, he would attend Luna OCS, to graduate with honors on May 14th of the following year.

_**-CHAPTER END-**_

See? This story _does_ link to the main _Teana's Travels_ plot. And yes, the thing known as Narud will make an appearance in later T's-T books. Up next: one last chapter to cover the events between the Second War and the arrival of the _Starshot_.


	9. The Calm

Final installment of Rise of the Phoenixes

"THIS FIC EXISTED BECAUSE I ALLOWED IT… AND IT WILL END BECAUSE I DEMAND IT."

SEE CHAPTER 1 FOR DISCLAIMERS

**-**_**CHAPTER START**_**-**

Things didn't settle down too much after the end of the Second War. Granted, there was peace again, and Earth was no longer under threat. But January of 2559 saw an attack by the infamous Delasian Raiders on a pleasure cruise ship in the Fortuna System, leaving 500 innocent civilians dead. In response, on March 13th, 2559, Chairman Grace Staunton-Howard green-lit Operation: PORT ROYAL – an in-depth, multi-year plan to significantly cut down on violent piracy across human space. The operation would go on to become an overwhelming success – within a year, the Raiders were 35% destroyed. By 2567, they were 93% exterminated; also, many other dangerous pirate groups were eliminated altogether.

On July 19th, 2560, two high-profile individuals – one a recently-promoted Lower-Half Rear Admiral and also a member of the League Council, the other a Spec-Ops Gunnery Sergeant – were married (laws against two servicemen marrying had been dropped a couple centuries back, though it was still rather rare). Seeing as both of them were famous figureheads, some found it slightly surprising that the marriage of John Devine and Melody Marston-Johnson was such a quiet affair – no media coverage was allowed, and only personal friends and family were invited. Melody, tough girl she was, was a bit uncomfortable in a dress, but such things were tradition. She dearly wished her birth mother had been able to attend, but she had been off-planet when the First War took place and had, for various reasons, been unable to contact her daughter, though she dearly wanted to. Carol Marston would learn of the marriage the same way everyone else did: through a news article a month after the wedding.

Their honeymoon would be put on hold, however, when the League received a call for help: an "ambassador" from an oppressed people begging for League intervention against the tyrannical dictatorship gripping her world. The League, upon learning the specifics, agreed to help. Thus, on August 4th, a League fleet arrived in the Asgard System, and the Aspatria Campaign began.

The situation was thus: Aspatria was in the grip of a dictator named Francias Renacross, who was taking facets of Aspatrian traditional/fundamentalist religion – women and children are to be subservient to men and their wills – and taking them up to 11, making it so all women and all children under 13 were literally property of men, not allowed to have anything – even clothing - , not even considered to be people, and the males who "owned" them could do anything they wished to them – abuse, prostitution, rape, indiscriminate murder – with the Aspatrian church having been twisted to sanction and support this. A bloodthirsty military controlled the populace, keeping the poor subjugated and occasionally butchering entire slums' worth of people to keep control. The planet was choked with centuries of rampant pollution, with disease common and early deaths frequent. To the Confederacy, bloated and content with itself, the plight of the Aspatrians had been a story downplayed and kept hidden from most, with leadership too apathetic to do anything. To the freedom- and equality-seeking, humanitarian League, it was an absolute nightmare that had to be rectified as quickly as possible.

The League fleet, led by John Devine in the _Striking Hammer_, made their intents clear. Renacross responded by declaring war on the League. The League, however, did not classify it as a war. Doing so would mean they recognized Renacross' sovereignty, which they did not. Thus, the Aspatria Campaign would be classified by the League as a combination anti-pirate operation, anti-terrorism operation, and humanitarian operation.

The anti-Renacross Aspatrians consisted of children, women, and a (comparatively) few men who actually had hearts and were disgusted by the lengths Renacross and those loyal to him had taken things. The League quickly got them organized at several groundside bases, with the _Striking Hammer _and the carrier _Durandal _serving as orbital C&C.

Against the League's superior training, discipline, technology, weapons, and numbers, the dictatorship's military did not fare well at all.

**-**_**SCENE BREAK**_**-**

**Enemy Military Base on Aspatrian Southwest Continent**

**September 15****th****, 2560**

Melody's twin blasters cut down another three Aspatrian soldiers, as the physically-16-year-old led her team's (Klara Leads, Dani Wilson, and Alialena "Ali" Raley) advance further into the base. The sight of her – a young woman with red, silver, black, and blue full-body armor, with eyes concealed by a metallic blue HUD visor and her face hidden by a retractable faceplate (which, for this campaign, held a filtration system to allow Melody easy breathing in this planet's pollution-choked atmosphere) – did unnerve some of the Aspatrian Loyalists, but fear of their dictator and of their commanding officers kept them from retreating.

They soon reached the base's main control room – a large, open area with a head-sized glowing object floating in midair above a circular pit in the center of the room. The scan function of Melody's visor identified the luminescent device as an Architect relic, the Architects being the race who, millions of years ago, created the rejuvenation tech now used by humanity. There were also nearly two-dozen Aspatrian military personnel, and nearly all of them opened fire at Melody and her team. The quartet dove for cover, letting their energy shields recharge from the few hits they took, and then tossed out four frag grenades. The explosives took out six hostiles and wounded four more, and Mel & Klara then started picking more off with their BR55s. Then a squad of League shock-troopers came in behind Mel's team, adding their fire to the Spec-Ops'. In little time, the room was clear.

Melody walked up to the artifact, disabling the containment field. She grabbed hold of a loose, dead cable with one hand and stretched out to grab the artifact. She got a good hold of the ancient device, but then the cable began to slide, threatening to drop Melody down the 100-foot-deep shaft… only to be caught by someone. Melody looked up at her rescuer.

"You know…" Colonel Veers said. "Your father never asked me for help, either."

He pulled Melody up onto solid ground. She gave a nod in thanks, and then placed the artifact in a special radiation-shielded section of her pack, just in case.

"The guys in X-Arc are gonna want to check this thing out" she said, referring to the League's Xenoarcheology Department, currently based just north of Olympus Mons on the terraformed Mars.

"Sir, ma'am" Raley interrupted. "We've found enemy force-deployment data in one of the offices here."

"Good find, Ali" Melody said. "Transfer what you can up to the _Durandal_, and then help the others and Veers' guys secure the base."

"Aye, ma'am."

**-**_**SCENE BREAK**_**-**

By the end of October, Renacross' forces were on their last legs, and even he knew it. He pulled what was left of his armies to form a fortress formation around the capital of Volus, having them torch & burn some towns and cities along the way, regardless of whether or not civilians were still in them (fortunately, the League were able to act quick enough to minimize fatalities from this). The first of November saw the beginning of the final assault on the fortified capital.

**-**_**SCENE BREAK**_**-**

**Eight kilometers southwest of Volus**

**November 2****nd****, 2560**

Nina Carpenter, pilot of the Koprulu Terran dropship _Hammer & Nail_, forcefully guided the controls of her dying craft. Her ship had already taken a hit when she was flying the Spec-Ops team Epsilon Squad into the area, but she'd stayed behind to draw enemy fire, taking several more hits in the process. Now, an Aspatrian war-mech, 20 meters tall, stood in the path of Epsilon, ready to annihilate them. There was only one thing she could throw at it to take it down, to ensure Epsilon could complete their objective.

Memories of lost friends flashed through her mind – Tabitha, killed during the Oakland Atrocity in the First War; Claudia, murdered by the treacherous "Shockwave" Dragovich during the Second War; and Eve, the little Lucavi girl who'd been MIA without a trace for 10 years now, presumed by most to be dead. It seemed… she'd be seeing them soon.

"_Captain_" Epsilon's leader said. "_You don't have the firepower to kill that thing!_"

"…But I have the mass."

As the _H&N _flew past the war-mech, peppering it with gunfire, Epsilon-1's voice came over the comm. again. "…_Understood. Hit him hard._"

"We had a hell of a run together, James. …I'll tell Claudia you said hi."

The _Hammer & Nail _banked hard, and then flew straight at the Aspatrian war machine, impacting its cockpit at well over 150 kilometers per hour, vanishing in a fireball that engulfed the mech. Secondary explosions proceeded to rip the war-mech apart, bits & pieces crashing to the ground. The soldiers of Epsilon Squad stood in silence for several seconds, before James Reiter, Epsilon-1, silently signaled for them to proceed.

**-**_**SCENE BREAK**_**-**

On November 6th, Francias Renacross, his armies broken, was captured by League and Resistance forces. He was subjected to a public execution via pistol bolt to the head, courtesy of Devine himself, signaling the end of his tyrannical reign. Many of the planet's male Aspatrians chose to die rather than lose the power they'd held for so long, either going down fighting the League or committing suicide. The end result was a population balance of nearly four females for every one male. With League assistance, they eventually puzzled out a confederation-style government. The women of the Aspatrians, so long oppressed, were helped to begin adjusting to such a dramatic upheaval.

The Aspatrians were soon made a "Protectorate" of the Tripartate, the vulpine sapients set up to enjoy the protection of Kyyreni fleets, the technical expertise of the Elvaan, and the analytical skill of the Lucavi. The Phoenix League booted up their mega-forge for something new, and soon a series of ultra-advanced, automated "scrubbers" set about working to cleanse Aspatria's atmosphere, soil, and oceans of toxins and pollutants; it would probably take decades, but Aspatria would be clean again.

Things progressed smoothly and more-or-less peacefully for the next several years. On April 6th, 2561, Grace Staunton-Howard gave birth to a daughter, Harriet Staunton-Howard; she did not reveal who the father was, but did admit that she was, in fact, married, but chose to keep things on the down-low so her husband would be able to avoid heavy media attention (a wise move, for the man had once, in 2559, came dangerously close to assaulting an obnoxious reporter after growing tired of the other man's "snide insinuations").

In October of 2562, in Confederate space, an internal operation succeeded in rounding up and "dealing with" the remaining corrupt officials and military commanders whose actions were largely responsible for the First War. The kindly Jacob Williams was made president, while Confederate Vice-Admiral Rebecca Devine (mother of the League's famous John Devine) was made acting leader of the New Confederate military forces. On November 10th, an uneasy ceasefire/truce was negotiated between the Phoenix League and the Outreach Confederacy.

**-**_**SCENE BREAK**_**-**

**February 14****th****, 2563**

"I can't believe you, Melody!"

"Oh, c'mon, Ishy. It's not so bad."

"Yes, it is! I can't believe that you'd be so irresponsible as to be running around fighting pirates and other military work _while pregnant_!"

"I'm only two months along! I haven't slowed down any! Besides, I'm taking it a little easy when I go out on pirate-hunt ops, and I'm wearing extra-thick armor over the front of my torso."

"You shouldn't be fighting _at all_!"

"You really shouldn't, Mel."

"Oh, _come on_, Katie; you're taking _her _side?"

"Afraid so in this case."

Melody sighed. She'd been doing her damndest not to let anyone know she was expecting – not even Johnny – because she _knew _she'd get this kind of reaction. Worse, if the high-ups found out, they might make her take maternity leave. For Melody, who was a born & bred soldier, being stuck at home, helpless and weak, unable to go out and fight and save people, would truly be a horrible fate. She eyed Ishtar's clenched left fist, again feeling the tiniest bit of surprise that the limb looked and felt so real that it was sometimes quite hard to remember that it was technically artificial; it was not a single mechanical prosthetic, instead consisting of painstakingly-crafted artificial bone, muscle, nerves, blood vessels (which did in fact carry Ishtar's actual blood in them), and such. Nearby, Kate Scott-Compton sat, keeping a neutral look on her face (something she'd gotten very, very good at as head of ONI).

"You really should take some time off for this" Kate said. "At least until the kid is born."

"Oh, and be stuck at home, sitting on my ass while those damn Delasians keep pillaging and killing, and while my soldiers fight and die without me at their side? No fucking thank you!"

"The Delasian Raiders are circling the drain, Mel. You know this. You're just so used to fighting that the thought of not being able to for any more than a month's time drives you nuts, doesn't it?"

"…Yes."

"…Okay. I'll keep this under my hat. But sooner or later, it'll start to show, and someone else _will _notice and squeal to Command. You won't be able to hide the fact you've got a mini human growing inside you forever. What, were you envisioning somehow keeping a growing belly hidden, and, like, giving birth in the middle of an op and then charging off to fight while leaving the kid with a ship's doctor or something?"

Melody shifted uncomfortably. "I-It's not that I don't want to be a mother. It's just that… I don't want the helplessness and dependency that comes before, during, and immediately after becoming one."

"Mel, you are one of the strongest-willed people I've ever met" Ishtar said. "And I've lived a _long _time, so that's saying something. You wouldn't be here if you weren't. You wouldn't be such an incredible field leader if you weren't. But sometimes, that headstrong willpower of yours can be a bad thing. Times like now. …I won't squeal on you, but somebody _will _notice, and that'll be that."

"Heh. I've got lots of experience in hiding things, Ishy. They won't find out."

**-**_**SCENE BREAK**_**-**

They did.

**-**_**SCENE BREAK**_**-**

**Albany, NY**

**August 9****th****, 2563**

"I should warn you, ma'am" John Devine said to his & Melody's apartment's visitor. "She's _really _touchy. Don't be surprised if she vents on you."

"I can handle things, Johnny" Grace replied. "I understand Mel pretty well, in case you haven't realized yet already."

"Yeah, but she's never been like this before. …Okay; if you think you can handle it, go ahead. But if things start to look dicey, call me in."

Grace walked into the house, heading for the living room. There, sitting on the couch, was Melody, very visibly pregnant and also visibly depressed and on edge. She looked up, giving Grace a morose look. Grace walked over and sat next to her, putting an arm around the younger woman's shoulder; Melody leaned into her, resting her head on Grace's shoulder. They sat quietly like that for about a minute.

"I hate this" Melody muttered.

"What part of it?" Grace asked.

"All of it. The physical changes are bad enough, but I can sorta handle them. What I _can't _handle is being stuck at home, unable to do anything."

Grace responded by pulling Melody closer, her arm going around the young woman's expanded waist, the hand resting on the slightly-exposed belly. As she held the distraught girl, she remembered. Back in May, Melody's pregnancy, which she'd been working to hide, had been discovered by the higher-ups, courtesy of a psyker detecting the second life growing within her. True to her "fears", the council did indeed "force" her to take maternity leave, stating that no matter how much of an invaluable field asset she was, they simply could not allow her to see combat while pregnant. Melody reacted viciously, pretty much screaming about how she refused to be reduced to "a helpless, dependant civilian" when there were people out there whose lives were depending on her. When the council stuck to their decision, it took a few MPs to restrain her without seriously injuring her, and not before Veers lost a tooth, Grace wound up with a black eye, and one of the MPs was literally knocked unconscious with a concussion.

Fortunately, pirate activity was at an all-time low, with Melody's team getting a lot of down time interspersed with occasional easy missions (a Lucavi named Nikkos of the Beachhead Clan was currently filling in as team leader); Melody's fears about not being there to lead her team through tough situations proved unfounded, as they didn't encounter any "tough" (by their standards) situations during her absence to begin with.

"I hate having to sit on my ass at home all day" Melody continued. "I hate not being able to move around in the way I _should _be able to. I hate having to depend on Johnny and others for everything that I should normally be able to do myself. I hate not being in the field! I hate not being able to fight! I hate not being with my team! I hate being stuck here, helpless and… and so fucking _useless!-!_"

"There, there" Grace pulled Melody into a full-on hug, the younger and slightly shorter girl burying her face in Grace's shoulder. "I went through the same thing you did with Harriet."

"No, you didn't" Melody's muffled voice replied with a sniffle. "You do your stuff from an office or a ship's command center; you were able to keep doing your job when you were pregnant. I'm a Spec-Ops field leader… or at least, I _was _until this…"

"And you can still be one after you've recovered from pregnancy and birth. You haven't really put on too much weight, and your muscles actually haven't weakened; I know this because Johnny told me how he's caught you doing whatever exercise you can pretty often. It won't take very much or very long for you to get back in peak condition. Though… promise me you'll give it at least a month, if only so you can spend that time with your son."

Silence.

"Can you please promise me that, Melody?"

After several seconds, Melody whimpered, but Grace felt as her head almost-imperceptibly nodded. She brought a hand up to gently stroke Melody's hair.

"Good girl."

They stayed like that, embracing while seated on the couch, Melody letting the warmth of her must trusted friend ease her worries and the stress her body felt.

"Have you decided on a name yet?"

"…Miles. …Fairbrass always said he wanted to be a godfather if I ever had kids."

"He and Harry would be happy for you. You know that, right? So would Claudia; to be truthful, I'd kinda imagined her being a nice "honorary aunt" in this situation."

"…To absent friends."

"To absent friends."

**-**_**SCENE BREAK**_**-**

On September 11th, 2563, Melody gave birth to a healthy baby boy, Miles Marston-Johnson-Devine. She wasted almost no time in trying to get her body "working right" again (despite doctors' protests), while also taking care to give equal attention to her new son. By October 18th, she was cleared for active duty again. John Devine's assignment to lead the Home Guard ensured that he was able to take care of their son whenever Melody was on a mission, and she always made sure to return home as soon as possible after every mission's completion.

Things progressed smoothly and peacefully. And on May 14th, 2567, a 1600-meter starship of ancient design came out of Slipstream Space near Earth, signaling the start of a new adventure for the Phoenix League.

**-**_**STORY END**_**-**

And that is the backstory/history of the Phoenix League introduced in Teana's Travels Book 3. Next time (which may take a while, seeing that I just finished Mass Effect 1 and am now about to start ME2), we will continue where we left off in T's T Book 5. See ya then.


End file.
